BY WENDY ELLIOTT
welliott@kentvilleadvertiser.ca
NovaNewsNow.com
Tricia Cochrane of Annapolis Valley Health (AVH) says the overextended health care system in this region is looking at how and when midwifery can be funded at Valley Regional Hospital.
She said that AVH learned from the province 10 days ago that several pilot sites were going to be set up as an early introduction.
“Our response back to them is that we need to know more. The process is unfolding at the provincial level,” she said.
Since then, Cochrane has been speaking with her colleagues at other districts “and we all need to learn more from the department of health.”
Cochrane said she is meeting this week with representatives from Families Ensuring Midwifery Services (FEMS). “We believe that our maternal and child care service can include midwives in an inter-professional practice.
“I certainly understand the passion that people have and I hope there’s no perception that we don’t embrace midwifery. It’s just our priority right now is the care of seniors.”
Families Ensuring Midwifery Services rallied Thursday at the AVH offices in Kentville and have an online petition asking the health authority to consider having the district become one of the initial model sites.
Provincial centre of interest
Louise McDonald, a Wolfville area midwife with 30 years’ experience, says the Valley community has long been a provincial centre of strong interest in the midwifery model of maternity care. “In fact, since the ‘80s, there have been midwives continually practicing in the Valley. This is true for no other region in Nova Scotia.”
McDonald adds our local hospital is overcrowded. The comprehensive midwifery model of care, which includes early discharge from hospital and home-based postnatal care, would free up much-needed hospital beds.
“With the current shortage of family doctors, especially ones who provide maternity care, low-risk women in our area desperately need primary caregivers such as midwives. Midwives can fill an important and growing gap in our local health care system.” Furthermore, McDonald says, the district has the “third largest population and third highest number of births in Nova Scotia. Also, the Annapolis Valley Health District is one of only two districts in Nova Scotia with annual population growth.”
Wolfville mother Jenn Hoegg, who is expecting her third child, says that as a “past and present midwifery client, I'm very concerned about AVH not expressing interest in midwifery implementation. It looks like there will be no legal way to obtain midwifery care for those of us in the Valley a year from now.”
Hoegg believes that “with only four GPs attending births at the Kentville hospital (and only one of those, to my knowledge, taking on new patients) most women have no choice of care provider and many, many low-risk pregnancies take up the ObGyn's time.”
Bestselling authors lends voice
Ami MacKay, bestselling author of The Birth House, was helping to circulate the petition. She said, “no matter if your child-rearing days have just begun, or are long past, the birth of every child is an important and significant event within a community. Midwives have brought much needed support to mothers and children of the Annapolis Valley, but their work has been limited by the current lack of support from the provincial health care system.
“Having their work recognized by, funded and included in the health care system will broaden the availability of their care as well as contribute greatly to a system that is currently heavily burdened when it comes to pre-natal care, labour and delivery, and post-natal care,” said the Scott’s Bay writer.
Lisa Hammett Vaughan, a member of FEMS from Wolfville, stated, “our area has long been a centre for midwifery in the province and we want to see that fine model of maternity care continue here when the Department of Health initially implements midwifery services under Bill 107.”
Kristen Rector, department of health spokesperson, said recently that the province is currently working with the health-care community, including the Association of Nova Scotia Midwives, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Doctors Nova Scotia and College of Registered Nurses, to develop regulations and an implementation plan for the legislation to integrate midwifery into primary maternity care. The province believes that midwives can play a key role as part of a team approach to maternity care, she added.
“We are hopeful that the Midwifery Act will be proclaimed by this summer, and it is the department’s hope that publicly-funded midwifery services will be available in the province the following year.”
The online petition can be accessed at:
www.gopetition.com
