What do you do when a ob misrepresents himself to clients?

[Emilie]

What do you do when an ob misrepresents himself/herself to get clients.
What I mean by this is by pretending to be VBAC or vaginal birth friendly but also passing out information on the ills of vaginal birth? Basically talking out both sides of ones mouth? HOw can we combat this in our communities? Not only our home communities but our internet ones as well.

Thanks

[jengacnm]

A friend of mine, not medical at all, just mentioned that he thinks there should be an Angie's List for doctors. Problem is, I'm not sure how it could happen without allegations of slander/libel by the doctors. You know how touchy and delicate they can be. :rollseyes

It could be done the opposite way, too-maybe a list of doctors with the 10 lowest c section rates in a given area, the hospital with the highest VBAC rate, whatever.

Anyone else?

Jennifer

[flapjack]

This gets through to lots of people

[JanetF]

Sounds like a normal surgeon to me. If you don't want surgery, don't hire one seems the safest and clearest word to me. I'd like to see consumers understand that there are different models of care and what they're for so women who are perfectly healthy don't think they need a surgeon anyway.

ETA: nice table from the UK. I have all the perinatal data from each state of Australia on my website, for some states I have this kind of breakdown per hospital as well. Women still don't think it applies to them. They think if they can just be assertive, just have a good birth plan, just have an assertive/aggressive dp with them, just turn up late in labour bla bla bla. Getting through to women that 1 in 3 means ONE IN THREE not just those sickly looking women you saw in the waiting room, IT MEANS YOU is the hard part. If you deny the reality of what you're choosing you can't protect yourself effectively from it. And no one should have to protect themselves from a CP but somehow it became ok for us to believe it's ok.

[Belle]

I think it is pretty much standard for a doctor "offering" a VBAC to present scare tactics to convince the mother to choose the c/s. The "informed consent" form is very one sided and says nothing of the risks of ERC.

[Emilie]

Yes.... I agree. So what about if someone/something you trusted was advertising this?

[lolar2]

I think that would depend on his results-- how many of his VBAC-preferring clients actually get one? If it's a good number, I probably wouldn't worry too much about it. If most of them get C-sections because of his scare tactics, then I would warn his potential clients if I had contact with them.

[JanetF]

If it was someone I actually knew I'd confront them and tell them to get hold of correct information and stop endangering the lives of the hapless clients who hire them. If I were able to I'd warn clients without thinking twice. Just as I'd warn another woman about a dodgy mechanic who left the brakes on my car not working, I'd warn them about a dodgy surgeon who endangered their life by manipulating them into unnecessary and potentially lifethreatening surgery. No woman with a healthy pregnancy should be seeing a surgeon anyway so if we could get that message Out There then we wouldn't even need to talk about it.

[2Sweeties1Angel]

The "informed consent" form is very one sided and says nothing of the risks of ERC.

Have you ever seen the one for the ERCS? It's the same way.

[ericswifey27]

Originally Posted by 2Sweeties1Angel

Have you ever seen the one for the ERCS? It's the same way.

The "informed consent" I got for my csection was the doctor verbally telling me of the risk of infection or bleeding. That was it, no mention of other risks such as death, for example. I know I also signed a paper consent form, but I was in no condition to actually read it.