Midwife led maternity care

It's easy to rattle off phrases such as 'woman centred care' or 'continuity of care' or 'continuity of carer' or 'evidence based care' because that's the politically correct language (from a maternity care point of view) of our day. These words are popping up repeatedly in the documents that are being prepared by government agencies in preparation for the implementation of the government's maternity reform packages. We should all feel very confident, shouldn't we?

There is one evidence based care option that has largely been avoided in the process; 'midwife led maternity care'. It's not PC in Australian maternity circles to talk about anyone leading care. We are being told that we need to talk about 'collaborative' care.

Quoting from the NHMRC Draft National Guidance on Collaborative Maternity Care,
"Principles of maternity care collaboration:
1. Maternity care collaboration places the woman at the centre of her own care, while supporting the professionals who are caring for her (her carers). Such care is coordinated according to the woman’s needs, including her cultural, emotional, psychosocial and clinical needs.
2. Collaboration empowers women to choose care that is based on the best evidence and is appropriate for themselves and for their local environment.
3. Collaboration enables women to make informed decisions by ensuring that they are given information about all of their options. This information should be based on the best evidence, and agreed to and endorsed by professional and consumer groups.
...
9. Collaboration aims to maximise a woman’s continuity of carer by providing a clear description of roles and responsibilities to support the person that a woman nominates to coordinate her care (her ‘maternity care coordinator’)."
[you can read it all here]

It sounds excellent: the woman nominates her 'maternity care coordinator'. Those who want a midwife can arrange midwife led care. Right?

Not really. I will try to explain.

Some who want a midwife as maternity care coordinator will, hopefully, be able to have a midwife who is employed within public hospital birthing programs similar to those that already exist. The midwife will be able to coordinate the care, but only within the hospital's protocols, as is the case in many midwife care models today. That's where there may be a problem. These protocols are strictly controlled by the hospital's medical authorities.

This is not midwife led care.

It's a hybrid that restricts midwives, and is unlikely to make much difference to outcomes when compared with the standard care in those hospitals.

Examples of restrictions experienced by midwives working under hospital protocols are already emerging. A mother who has had previous home births, and who is booked in a hospital homebirth program (one of the Victorian government's 'pilot' homebirth sites) has been told she will NOT be permitted to have a physiological third stage. The midwife is REQUIRED to inject an oxytocic, actively managing third stage. Another mother who has had previous home births has been told she is not permitted to give birth at home under the 'pilot' because one of her previous births was a caesarean. She has been told that a pilot program is very closely watched, and her presence in the pilot would skew the figures.


A recent Lamaze blog post by Amy Romano, titled
What’s Behind the Cochrane? (or…, “The Good News About Midwives Gets Better!”) explores 'gold standard' research in maternity care. When we look at the best research evidence into models of maternity care, we can conclude that optimal care is midwife led care. That means a woman has a known midwife who not only provides the primary service throughout the pregnancy, birthing, and postnatal phases; who is the responsible professional in attendance at birth; and who accesses/ refers to specialist services when and if required.

Amy Romano warns:
"Women often believe that going to an obstetrician practice that employs midwives is getting “the best of both worlds.” The Cochrane review of midwife-led care in fact tells us that such arrangements are ineffective, inefficient, and may be hazardous to the health of women and babies."


At present there are very few options of midwife led maternity care in mainstream Australian public hospitals. (There are none in private hospitals).