NHS Meltdown: Birthing Mothers Turned Away From Hospitals
The news at the NHS goes from crisis to crisis. Now, women in labor are being turned away from hospitals. From the story:
Almost half of NHS hospitals were forced to turn women in labour away last year because they were full, according to new figures that reveal the "shocking" state of NHS maternity services. Patient groups said the capacity crisis was putting many mothers and babies at increased risk, by increasing anxiety and forcing them to travel further at a crucial time.If that happened here--particularly, if Bush were still President--can you imagine the screaming? But this isn't a right wing plot. It is socialized medicine.
Labels: NHS Meltdown
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 10:21 PM
8 Comments
8 Comments:
Have you read Pushed? The US maternity system is in crisis b.c of hospitalists & insurance companies. We have an embarassingly high maternal death rate b/c of a c-section epidemic.
Hospitals are not the best place for healthy laboring women--that's one thing the Dutch have right.
I'm a huge fan of yours & hope you put this book on your list.
Annie the superfast reader: Thanks for this. I am certainly no fan of the current HMO approach. But I don't think we have women in labor turned away from hospitals. In Canada, women are sent to the USA to give birth for due to the same problem.
Wesley,
We can finally agree here. Socialized medicine will become the bane of US health care.
Expect a decline in service and quality, less competition,lower wages for doctors and less ability to form malpractice suits.
Innovation will be stifled by the long arm of govt mandated health care.
The US was a model of health care until the govt allowed insurance and drug companies to corrupt the free market.
Of course this sickness is just a symptom of the larger cancer that has become our fascist leaning social system.
We have other, more serious problems--women forced to have unnecessary interventions that have nothing to do with the health of mother or baby. It has become next to impossible for a woman to have an unmedicated birth in a hospital setting. OBs are trained to treat problems that arise during birth, but they are not trained to see birth as a natural process.
Honestly, in most cases those women would be safer birthing at home than going to an American hospital. The national c-section average is around 35%. At some hospitals it is MUCH higher.
Oh, and I know lots of women who labored in triage b/c no beds were available. One friend of mine gave birth in a closer used as a passageway so people were coming & going as she was pushing.
I do hope you have a chance to read this book. These might not be culture of death issues per se, but they stem from the same disrespect for life.
Oh--and I'm not arguing in favor of socialized medicine, just against hospitals & insurance companies.
annie: I'm with you, babe.
I'm with Annie on hospitals not being the best place for birthin'. Having babies isn't a sickness that needs treating- mammals have been doing it for years without IV's and drugs, most of which are just liability reduction measures on behalf of the hospital. I also hate that they take the baby away for hours after birth to bake in an impersonal little oven. I want my baby nursing and/or laying on my warm body rather than abandoned to a machine.
Maybe I'm just a hippie, but I intend to birth my babies in my bathtub with a midwife. Or if it's warm enough, on my porch in a kiddie pool.
Certainly this story about turning away birthing mothers displays a lack of compassion; and while I am not aware of any birthing mothers being turned away while in labor in the US, that fact that we have an incredibly high infant mortality rates in this country also displays a lack of compassion. And I'm sure you could find other glaring examples all over the world that lack compassion -- so my query is this: Do you think that the US system is *more* compassionate than the NHS?
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