Help start a movement to inform each other about midwives: post on Yelp!

[RosieL]

I am in search of a care provider, most likely a midwife. After reading threads about homebirth (e.g. http://www.mothering.com/community/forum/thread/1298928/can-we-have-an-honest-discussion) I realize I need to be extremely exacting in my selection of a MW. One of the biggest problems is finding out whether a MW has ever had a case of negligence or undue trauma. I can find recommendations for specific MWs, but it’s really hard to find reports of negative events or experiences.

Finding not just a competent but an excellent care provider in any health situation is *really* tough. One reason is that clients (us) aren't experts, so we can’t fully *judge* the expertise of a health provider even after we get to know them. We can only get a glimpse of their expertise from stories of how they handle themselves in extreme and difficult cases, and those stories seem to be really hard to find. (They exist, they are posted, but they're not collected anywhere.) Sometimes we can get info from certification boards, but that process can be hard and isn’t widely known.

I looked up my potential MW on birthsurvey.com, and she's got a ton of positives, and one mediocre rating. From the looks of the rating, I don't know why the client had a bad experience. For all I know the negative rating is because she was grossly negligent and let a baby die. Or it could just be that a client got pissed that the MW insisted on transfer because the baby was breech, for example. A negative rating without accompanying explanation, in this case, doesn't tell me much, KWIM? If it was an OB, I’d just look for the next OB. But in my area, I have precious few MW choices!

So, I thought we could try to initiate a movement to encourage mothers post their MW reviews on Yelp.com. It would be important to encourage factual accounts of birth experiences and ratings of MWs both positive and negative.  If we could get enough people behind the effort it might seriously change the way we have to search for midwives...

Why Yelp, you might ask? Because it:

• an established, free, infrastructure (birthsurvey.com is struggling for support right now)
• allows for text reviews
• is already widely used for other location-specific businesses
• allows for both anonymous (by creating a fake reviewer profile) and non-anonymous reviews
• has a policy where some (overly positive) reviews are hidden to prevent fake reviews, but those reviews are still always available
• businesses being reviewed can’t delete reviews (even if they pay Yelp), but they CAN respond to them as a review reply
• if a business isn’t listed, you can request to have it added

I was considering posting this on the tribes boards, but was hoping for feedback before that. I originally posted in the Healing after Trauma section, but no response, so I thought I would try here. Sorry for the crosspost. 

So, what do you think? Are you on board or does this sound dumb? Would you post your experience? Do you agree/disagree? Other thoughts?

 

[Monarchgrrl]

I like it. I posted my review last night after reading this. :)

[firewoman]

I think it is a good idea.  I do worry a bit about fake negative reviews.

[RosieL]

Thanks for the response! I maybe I should re-characterize, and encourage reviews of all providers. It's not just MWs that we need info about.

Fake negative reviews would be disappointing, but I am not sure where they would come from. I think it night be possible to distinguish between the real negatives and the not-real fnegatives. If someone puts a negative experience out there, it's a discussion point to bring up with your midwife. I'm not sure whether everyone works like I do, but I only really use reviews that have text explaining the rating (good, bad, or neutral), or when there are hundreds of reviews that agree.