Obstetrics ruling causes concern

Press, 25 November 1982, Page 6

Obstetrics ruling causes concern

Private maternity patients at Christchurch Women’s Hospital who needed an anaesthetic during their delivery would suffer as the result of a new ruling, Mr T. M. McGuigan said yesterday at a meeting of the North Canterbury Hospital Board.

The obstetrics review committee has decided that maternity patients at Christchurch Women’s Hospital who required an anaesthetic and who were private patients under the care of their own doctor would have to obtain the services of a private anaesthetist in future and not one employed by the hospital. If a private anaesthetist cannot be found, the patient should be transferred to the care of the hospital medical team for the rest of her maternity care, the committee has decided. She could then have an anaesthetic administered by a hospital anaesthetist.

Hospital anaesthetists have so far been giving private patients an anaesthetic if it has been needed.

The committee decided on the new ruling on this because, it said, the present?, system led to divided patient care. The ruling requires the approval of the board before it can come into effect.

, Mr McGuigan said that the ruling, which was of concern to women, had obviously been made “by a group of men.”

“I would hate to be the pregnant woman in the last stages of giving birth who suddenly finds that the doctor who has been caring for

her throughout her pregnancy is replaced at the last minute by someone she does not know, simply because her doctor cannot find a private anaesthetist,” Mr McGuigan said.

The committee’s decision was “totally unreasonable,” he said. * “The committee has changed the rules because it is concerned about the care of the patients. But this does not take-care of the patient at all,” he said. Another board member, Mr D. H. Lawrence, said he also opposed the new ruling. “I would like to be assured that it would be possible for the hospital to provide an anaesthetist in the event of the unavailability of a private one,” he said. The board agreed that the obstetric review committee ruling should be referred back to the health services committee for further consideration and, perhaps, amendment.

Dr R. A. Fairgray, the board’s medical-superintend-ent-in-chief, said he had been told that finding a private anaesthetist was not an insurmountable problem. Mr W. L. F. Utley said that it could be a long procedure sometimes, “by the time you have rung round all their homes.” , .

He said that private anaesthetists in Christchurch were trying to organise a facility where doctors had to telephone only one number to find out which private anaesthetists were available that day. “At the moment, anaesthe-

tists are having a bad time in the courts. If lay bodies are going to tell them what to do, as in this case, only more trouble can occur,” Mr Utley said. “If such a system is to come into use, and if it is not too difficult to find a private anaesthetist, surely.the hospital could help out by not switching those few women, for whom a private anaesthetist cannot be found, over to the care of strangers,” Mr McGuigan said.