The problem
There is currently a major problem occurring with the process of complaints about midwives. Several midwives around the country have had conditions placed on their registration due to complaints. These complaints are mostly from hospital staff when a labouring woman and her partner are transferring from a homebirth. Most of these restrictions demand that the independent midwife can only practice midwifery within a hospital birthing unit. This brings their homebirth practice to a screaming holt, leaving their women without a care provider and the midwife without an income!
The process as it currently stands is this:
The hospital staff or anyone put in a complaint to the Nursing and Midwifery Board (NMB) about a midwife. The Board meet monthly and decide whether the complaint needs to go to investigation or not. In some cases they’ll decide it doesn’t need an investigation and conditions will automatically go onto the midwives registration.
If they decide it needs investigating they slap ‘interim conditions’ on the midwives registration. In the case of homebirth midwives the conditions are “Must work only in a hospital and under supervision”.
The investigation then goes to the Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC) and the conditions remain on the midwives registration until the investigation is complete.
Basically, it is a matter of midwives being found guilty until proven innocent.
Investigations can take a year or more. This is leaving many women without a midwife (some are 39 weeks pregnant) and leaving midwives without income – and for some it could be a matter of losing their home, as they cannot pay their mortgage etc.
What needs to be made very clear is that this process of complaints is unfair, unjust and unethical. No conditions should be placed on any midwife until the investigation has taken place. Unless of course it was something incredibly bad like a midwife turning up to a birth intoxicated, sexual abuse – that sort of thing.
We only have 2 days to submit to the inquiry and shake up this disgusting injustice put upon our independent midwives who are brave enough to continue to work in what is now a minefield.
We need your help!!! We need you to have your say at the Senate inquiry into the administration of health practitioner registration by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA).
send a quick submission to the Inquiry
Inquiry
Inquiry into the administration of health practitioner registration by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA)
Due date
14 April 2011.
How to submit
Electronic form: www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/fapa_ctte/health_practitioner_registration/info.htm
OR
Email: fpa.sen@aph.gov.au as an attached Adobe PDF or MS Word format document. The email must include full postal address and contact details.
Submission template
We are asking Homebirth Access Sydney members to make a submission, which only needs to be a letter. Below is a sample submission letter. You can cut and paste the letter and just forward that on or cut and paste from anywhere on this email and create your own submission. It helps if you add your own thoughts and expereiences at the start of the letter.
We must bombard them. Every submission helps.
The potential for this to happen to any midwife is very real, which then puts many, many women in a position of either being forced into birthing in a hospital or freebirthing.
It is independent midwifery and your freedom of choice that is under attack and it must stop here.
PLEASE circulate this email far and wide and get writing ASAP!
TEMPLATE
To whom it may concern,
The current situation by which independent midwives are being processed if there has been a complaint against them is totally unacceptable, unfair, unjust and unethical. No conditions should be placed on any midwife before an investigation has taken place.
I have grave concerns that at any time my midwife could find her registration under restriction and this would exclude her from continuing to be my main care provider. This will force me into the hospital system or to choose to free birth.
I request that an urgent review of this process takes place immediately and that some balance be restored. Midwifery and homebirth is not a crime.
PLEASE SIGN OFF WITH YOUR NAME & POSTAL ADDRESS & CONTACT DETAILS FOR IT TO BE VALID.
(Source: Homebirth Australia)