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A Hens tooth - Home Births Parenting Issues
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A Hens tooth (Home Births)

cabletow

Member Name: cabletow

Product:

Home Births
Date: 23/09/01 (63 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: trust

Disadvantages: time

I am a NHS GP and I am one of very few who still participate in home deliveries, yes a rarity I know. The rewards to GPs are enourmous and well worth the time invested so why do more of us not step forward and become really involved with the most special part of our patients lives?
I do not really know. I have heard the well rehearsed arguments about lack of practice and malpractice litigation but surely these are no more if you actually practice.
The facts are: Home is the safest place to deliver a normal delivery. Home is the most relaxing place to deliver so pain releif and interventions in the delivery are minimised and home is the place where most women want to deliver. Understanding and acceeding to their wishes promotes listening and trust and in this situation the couple involved are less likely to complain.
I guess it is the uncertainty on time constraints that really do turn most GP's off.
My comment, therefore, is this. Why have we got to the stage where time has become such an important factor in our working lives. It is no wonder our patients find us too busy to talk to, too busy to listen, and too busy to care.
We as GPs need to take stock and realise it is this one fact that leads our patients to lose their trust in us.
Let us get back to what general practice should be about and leave the political and legal arguments to the managers and lawyers. Our patients would prefer it and we would enjoy the work again.
My plea to GP's is this - reconsider home birth as a way to regain that relationship with our patients.

Summary:

Last members to rate this review:
(13 members total)
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Overall rating: Very useful

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Last comments:
missmaile

- 09/06/08

I wish my GP was as supportive of homebirth as you are !
cabletow

- 23/09/01

no problem about the lenghth. I am pleased that all was well and you got the support you needed.
Further advice and contact www.webgp.fsnet.co.uk
Celandine

- 23/09/01

I really enjoyed reading this op - I'm someone who wanted, very much, to have a home birth. However, there are bits in the op that bother me a little. I had massive support from my own Gp to have a home birth, but, when complications set in at the later stages of pregnancy (I was polyhydramnic), therefore it was felt, by the great and the good of the medical profession, that it was best for me to go into hospital to have my child. This, probably, was a good decision in retrospect, since I was later to, alas, have an emergency caesarian. I'd have loved to have my child at home, but, especially since you are a Gp, I do think that it's nice to have the con's, as well as the pro's pointed out here, maybe? Oh, dear, I feel awful, since you almost certainly know a lot more than me about the whole thing, but, I do know, that the support of my GP through the whole ante and post-natal thing meant just as much, on a personal level, as it would if I had given birth at home. Sorry for such a long comment:)


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