Friday, December 31, 2010

'hands-off'?

I don't know who first came up with the idea of the 'hands-off' midwife: the midwife who has a good set of hands and knows how to sit on them.

Midwives are not universally 'hands-off' when we should be, nor are we always 'hands-on' when we ought to be. That latter point is what I am attempting to write about today.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Reviewing the past couple of years

To Daddy

A couple of years ago the federal Health Minister announced a Maternity Services Review, declaring that the government intended to provide “More Choice in Maternity Care – Access to Medicare [funding] and PBS [prescribing] for Midwives”. The monopoly of government funding for maternity care being available only for services provided by doctors and hospitals was to be broken.