im being investigated - Page 4

[Joannarachel]

I was just wondering how it was going and if there is an update

[DannysMomma]

Originally Posted by poxybat

pumpkin, i agree it is a bit odd for a town to liberal but the bith environment here is crap. well if you want a vbac it is. whick is also strange for such a liberal town...

not just for a vbac ... they'd be wise to support midwives more actively and give them hospital priviledges too. as it is they're losing a LOT of business to kc and topeka... doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. we need to raise a big stink.

I hope things look up for you soon. I'm sure it won't come to anything though. Well. I hope anyway.

[lorijds]

I can't comment on the OP's case, because the only things Iknow about it are what she has posted on here;

but I do work in the hospital in Lawrence. I can comment on their policies and their point of view; or at least, from what I think might be their point of view.

While I certainly feel that some aspects of the care and behaviour she has described are unacceptable and further alienate natural childbirthers from hospital births; look at their point of view, as well--a woman come in in labor, no medical records, no prenatal care. Sometimes women choose to avoid prenatal care because they are hiding addictions and/or physical abuse of themselves or thier children; this is seen much more often than a woman simply making the informed choice to decline prenatal care. So of course they are going to initiate a social work consult.

And in fact they must. Our admissions computer system automatically initiates a consult if someone doesn't meet certain requirements--routine care being one of them. Actually, I feel that on the whole our social work department is really amazing. They spend a heck of alot of time making sure that people know what resources are out there for them. If someone doesn't have routine care, they are going to try to find out why, and see if they can help them get it (because, we assume you *do* want it, especially if you have a chronic condition that continually lands you in the hospital--diabetes, for example).

I don't know all the details, like I said, of the OPs predicament. What I do know is that if you come in guns blazing, refuse a bunch of treatments, don't have a primary care physician, or indicate that you can't afford care; it would be negligent of us to NOT address those things. The fine line is determining when people are intelligently choosing things like no primary care and UC, and when they are doing it out of mental illness, lack of access to a physician, domestic abuse, or drug and alcohol addiction. Because, unfortunately, we DO see these things, and in the litigious society we work in, we have to cover ourselves. And really, it IS helpful to many patients, to learn about the community resources. We have seen, on my floor (the medical floor) a reduction in our repeat hospitalizations for our patients with chronic conditions, in part due to the efforts of our social work department. But of course, we can't be everything to everyone. It just doens't work that way, unfortunately.

I recently had a patient that looked like she had been beaten with a baseball bat. Seriously. Grapefruit sized bruises on her back, bum, legs, and arms. She was in with alcohol detox, and she told me she got them from falling. I told her it looked like someone had beat her, but she denied it. Since she said no, no one beat her, should I have left it at that? I didn't. I initiated a social work consult, in part because I feel like I am not qualified to address this (was she beaten, if so, what resources are available to her), and yet I felt like it needed to be addressed. Maybe she *did* just fall--she has an unsteady gait, because of her constant alcohol consumption; and she vehemently denied abuse. But I am in this profession because I love people, and I want to help them, and I also know that people, for many reasons, deny or misrepresent themselves sometimes.

Sometimes, and hopefully it is the situation this time, the social worker wants to ensure that the patient is making decisions based on an intelligent, logical reasoning. That she is refusing care and treatment for herself and her child, not because she has abuse issues, or money issues, or mental illness (and we see this stuff far too often) but because she has simply thought about it and decided that forgoing these things were what was best for herself and her family.

I hope that this clarified things a bit, and gives you a bit of the hospital staff's perspective. Again, not that I am excusing any disrespectful behavior that the OP may have experienced. I'm just clarifying why social work might get involved and that it may have nothing to do with a judgement call on the evils of UC; but rather concern for a person's access to care. We are caught in a difficult position sometimes. When to just let things go, and when to pursue them. Think of Andrea Yate--the medical community got some flak on that, and probably rightly so, in terms of follow up on her depression. What if the OP was the next Andrea Yates? What if she has a mental illness, doesn't take her meds, and thinks her infant is satan, and is going to cut its arms off? What if she didn't seek care because she is addicted to crack and didn't want anyone to know? What if her partner is a complete ass who is controlling and abusive, and didn't allow her to seek prenatal care, out of fear of losing control of her and fear of his abuse being discovered? These are the fears that we in the medical field have; of this mom or this baby coming in next time in a body bag, or being life flighted to KU Med because of something that we could have followed up on, but didn't.

[habibekindheart]

I do understand where you're coming from. However, the mentality that, in that line of work, so many people are at risk of mental illness, drug abuse, w/e (because they see it far more often than the regular population and their opinion is skewed), so everyone should be treated like they're crazy/have a problem until they prove otherwise is quite disrespectful and does hurt people, as we've seen in this case.

It shouldn't be my responsibility to have to explain to everyone and their grandmother (esp. people who have the power to harm my children) that I'm not crazy or drug addicted just because I choose UC birth. Atop that, if I need any services, I know exactly where to find them anyway.

I know that social workers are used to dealing with the 'lowest' segment of the population, but that doesn't mean they have the right to treat everyone that way until they prove differently. It does people a real injustice and it's rather pompous.

It is unfortunate that, no matter what we do, people will still get hurt, hurt themselves, hurt others, and die. However, it is a fact of life, and at some point we have to stop infringing on peoples' rights and lives to the point where WE compromise their safety to keep them safe with no justification. There is no way we can save everyone. I wish there was. But if we're going to try, we should take the time to determine if there's really a problem by actually caring and showing compassion and wisdom, instead of just dishing people off on the social workers with their 'guilty until proven innocent' mentality. I realize that, in one's line of work, it's not as easy as spending the time to befriend someone, w/e, but a lot of people call now and think never...convinced that they're doing the right thing putting everyone who meets any risk factors through 'screening' against their will. It's not okay. I do have rights. I don't want them trampled on a witch hunt in an area without a lot of concrete data. Heck, we can't even figure out what a perfect parent is and we've been trying for thousands of years. Last generation's perfect parent is this generation's child abuser. We don't know everything.

[bczmama]

Of course, none of your post addresses the matter really at the heart of the issue -- liability and the expenses of being sued. People are going to do what they need to do to protect themselves from being sued or brought up on ethics charges, and the hospital is going to do what it needs to do to protect its reputation and limit liability. Unless you are willing to accept a very tight cap on med/mal damages, you're going to have to put up with pushy social workers and not necessarily getting the procedures you want how you want them.

[habibekindheart]

and that would be why *I* don't go to hospitals...

[captain optimism]

Originally Posted by lorijds

I can't comment on the OP's case, because the only things Iknow about it are what she has posted on here;

but I do work in the hospital in Lawrence. I can comment on their policies and their point of view; or at least, from what I think might be their point of view.

So let me see if I understand this: the social work department should be swayed by the OP's explanation that she avoided pre-natal care because of a reasoned objection to medicalized childbirth? Because if their main concern is that the mother is too poor to afford pre-natal care, is avoiding prenatal care because of drug/alcohol issues, then they should be reassured by the OP's desire to care for herself in an alternative fashion?

But they won't be, will they? Because if the standard is "got prenatal care", are they going to understand an ideological objection to the available prenatal care? I mean, even with this understanding, how can she proceed and come out of this in one piece?

I don't blame the social workers for being cautious, I just wonder what this mom can do to avoid being tagged as neglectful.

[lorijds]

Originally Posted by captain optimism

So let me see if I understand this: the social work department should be swayed by the OP's explanation that she avoided pre-natal care because of a reasoned objection to medicalized childbirth? Because if their main concern is that the mother is too poor to afford pre-natal care, is avoiding prenatal care because of drug/alcohol issues, then they should be reassured by the OP's desire to care for herself in an alternative fashion?

But they won't be, will they?

I really can't comment on what the OB floor is like, but I know on the medical floor within the same hospital, there is a big push in regards to recognizing a patients right to decline care and/or procedures.

I can also tell you that right now there are some pissed off doctors who would love to attend VBACs in this town, but can't. The hospital doesn't officially NOT do them according to them; but their requirements are such that it is unrealistic for anyone to actually do them. I am quite sure that if this is presented as a case of, well, I did not want to be forced into major abdominal surgery, so I attempted to stay home/do it on my own; well, this is the argument against mandatory VBACs that some docs have used. That it will force some women to stay home and attempt to birth on their own rather than submit to another c-section. There aregoing to be docs in this town who are going to jump all over that, saying "See, see, THIS is what happens when we don't offer VBACS!"

Regardless of whether this is the reason why the OP decided to UC, I'm sure a segment of physicians with OB priviledges are going to be throwing it in the face of the chief of staff and the administration. I hope they do.

[dlcmama]

I don't think that this should call for an investigation because of a choice of labor. It's kinda silly and their focus should be elsewhere where it's needed. JMO

[lorijds]

I doubt that she is being investigated for choice of labor, if it were a situation of her simply having a UC. I know of people in the area who have had UCs who were not investigated. I suspect because in the end she did seek care that stimulated the investigation. Also, remember, there are two sides to every story; there could be information that we do not have. My intent of posting was mainly to try to provide a little insight into that other perspective.

Anyhow, I hope that everything goes well for the OP, and that she is able to enjoy her new baby. I'm glad you had a VBAC. Good for you!

[~member~]

I hope everything is okay.

[Jennifer Z]

You might call up the Mid American All Indian Center in Wichita and see if they can be of any help. Dh's best friend is Cherokee and I will ask him if he has any ideas, but it would be a few days.

[~MoonGypsy~]

Poxy, what ever happened?

[~MoonGypsy~]

[AngelBee]

:

[PrennaMama]

: It's been a few months, hope things didn't go south...:

Everyone is pulling for you, Poxy...