Hi,
Thought I might share this:
A letter to Virginia Mason Hospital (Seattle):
On March 3, 2003, our daughter was born in your hospital via cesarean section. Four and a half months later, we are finally able to extend feedback to you on our experience during the four days we stayed in the hospital.
Our daughter is by all general standards of medicine, healthy. To the extent that the surgery ended in a positive outcome - an alert and vigorously active baby, not in any need of resuscitation, we are grateful for the skill of the surgical team.
However, practically from the moment we entered the hospital until we left four days later with our daughter, again and again we found ourselves in an adversarial relationship with the hospital staff, and without the support of outside resources - namely our midwife - the stress of dealing with these conflicts could very easily have changed the health status of our daughter in very negative ways.
We had chosen to birth our child at home with the support of our midwife with whom we had established a close and deep personal and professional relationship over time. She was a coach and a teacher who held our values and choices in hand, balancing these with her twenty year+ skill and experience in the physical, emotional, and spiritual processes of birth.
Imagine our dismay when we were bluntly told moments before entering the OR, that she would not be allowed to be present. Of course it is easy to cite safety concerns, or conjure up some other convenient explanation, but I wonder if the real reason has more to do with the unfortunate mistrust and competitive disdain with which obstetrical doctors maintain towards midwives. I say unfortunate, because we were denied valuable emotional/physical support based on what seemed more an ego problem with the doctors involved.
Birth, being the critical defining moment of influence in a newborns health that it is, holds many clues to the future health of a newborn, and had our midwife been present, she could have advised us in subsequent care of mother and child, from a place of direct observation, rather than second hand information from an emotionally involved father who was observing the first birth of his life.
Lacking the emotional support of our chosen caregiver, we were forced to enter alone into a seemingly alien environment full of strangers who seemed to share only the most tenuous connection to our carefully thought out values regarding the sacredness of the birth process. the principal surgeon's demeanor and personality evoked more a feeling of a pre-game locker-room pep rally by a football coach, rather than the spiritual event for which we had prepared.
It is not my intent her to malign her character, merely to give constructive feedback. Again, I am grateful for her surgical skill and only wish to suggest that more could have been done to honor the wishes of the mother and father, without any undue sacrifices on the part of the hospital or its staff.
In the recovery room, despite our previously expressed wishes in triage regarding not applying any medicine to our newborn’s eyes, a nurse was moments away from doing just that when I asked her to stop. She replied somewhat defensively, "it’s state law". I maintained my stance, knowing full well that if such a law does exist, it is not enforceable. I had already clearly expressed myself on this point. Why was I put in the stressful position of having to defend my choice at such a critical moment? This kind of scenario repeated itself dozens of times in the following days.
When my wife’s initial sedative wore off, she quickly discovered that she had a pounding headache whenever she stood up. It always improved when she lay down. Dr. Brock seemed to ignore the obvious possibility of a spinal leak and instead chose to disempower the mother (and all mothers by extension), by suggesting that the headache was due to the long labor and extensive pushing. The message implied here (intentional or not) was: Birth is dangerous, especially at home, why push and embrace the primeval pain of childbirth when you can go the modern route and have an epidural and other procedures to smooth the way?
That the spinal leak diagnosis was overlooked was all the more curious given that the anesthesiologist had made about six separate stabs into the mother’s back before he finally got it right. When another older and un-ego/emotionally involved anesthesiologist visited our room days later, he quickly made the correct diagnosis, patched the leaks, and the headache was gone in 15 minutes. Three days of needless suffering while a mother was trying to be present to the miracle of birth and also face the intensity of a newborn’s needs! Really unfortunate.
Lest you think I may be acting out some slanderous vendetta based upon the length of this letter, I will not recount the many other needless conflicts we experienced - just one: A pediatric nurse enters our room and announces herself with a cold intellectual look of superiority: "I am the baby expert". How exceedingly arrogant and emotionally disconnected to utter such a statement in the presence of the true experts - a mother and baby duo who were still emerging from the most intense experience of their collective lives.
It is fashionable these days amongst health care institutions and practitioners to publish brochures which wax grandly about "patient centered care", heaping accolades upon oneself regarding excellence in listening and so forth. As a health care professional myself, I know that I must constantly strive to remove my ego from my work, refining my listening, and considering how best to benefit the person before me. It is my hope that perhaps some of these feedback may find its way to the ear-heart of someone in the hospital who might share these values of listening, honoring the diverse needs of individuals.
Respectfully,
Jordan Van Voast, Hsieh Yu Chin
Thought I might share this:
A letter to Virginia Mason Hospital (Seattle):
On March 3, 2003, our daughter was born in your hospital via cesarean section. Four and a half months later, we are finally able to extend feedback to you on our experience during the four days we stayed in the hospital.
Our daughter is by all general standards of medicine, healthy. To the extent that the surgery ended in a positive outcome - an alert and vigorously active baby, not in any need of resuscitation, we are grateful for the skill of the surgical team.
However, practically from the moment we entered the hospital until we left four days later with our daughter, again and again we found ourselves in an adversarial relationship with the hospital staff, and without the support of outside resources - namely our midwife - the stress of dealing with these conflicts could very easily have changed the health status of our daughter in very negative ways.
We had chosen to birth our child at home with the support of our midwife with whom we had established a close and deep personal and professional relationship over time. She was a coach and a teacher who held our values and choices in hand, balancing these with her twenty year+ skill and experience in the physical, emotional, and spiritual processes of birth.
Imagine our dismay when we were bluntly told moments before entering the OR, that she would not be allowed to be present. Of course it is easy to cite safety concerns, or conjure up some other convenient explanation, but I wonder if the real reason has more to do with the unfortunate mistrust and competitive disdain with which obstetrical doctors maintain towards midwives. I say unfortunate, because we were denied valuable emotional/physical support based on what seemed more an ego problem with the doctors involved.
Birth, being the critical defining moment of influence in a newborns health that it is, holds many clues to the future health of a newborn, and had our midwife been present, she could have advised us in subsequent care of mother and child, from a place of direct observation, rather than second hand information from an emotionally involved father who was observing the first birth of his life.
Lacking the emotional support of our chosen caregiver, we were forced to enter alone into a seemingly alien environment full of strangers who seemed to share only the most tenuous connection to our carefully thought out values regarding the sacredness of the birth process. the principal surgeon's demeanor and personality evoked more a feeling of a pre-game locker-room pep rally by a football coach, rather than the spiritual event for which we had prepared.
It is not my intent her to malign her character, merely to give constructive feedback. Again, I am grateful for her surgical skill and only wish to suggest that more could have been done to honor the wishes of the mother and father, without any undue sacrifices on the part of the hospital or its staff.
In the recovery room, despite our previously expressed wishes in triage regarding not applying any medicine to our newborn’s eyes, a nurse was moments away from doing just that when I asked her to stop. She replied somewhat defensively, "it’s state law". I maintained my stance, knowing full well that if such a law does exist, it is not enforceable. I had already clearly expressed myself on this point. Why was I put in the stressful position of having to defend my choice at such a critical moment? This kind of scenario repeated itself dozens of times in the following days.
When my wife’s initial sedative wore off, she quickly discovered that she had a pounding headache whenever she stood up. It always improved when she lay down. Dr. Brock seemed to ignore the obvious possibility of a spinal leak and instead chose to disempower the mother (and all mothers by extension), by suggesting that the headache was due to the long labor and extensive pushing. The message implied here (intentional or not) was: Birth is dangerous, especially at home, why push and embrace the primeval pain of childbirth when you can go the modern route and have an epidural and other procedures to smooth the way?
That the spinal leak diagnosis was overlooked was all the more curious given that the anesthesiologist had made about six separate stabs into the mother’s back before he finally got it right. When another older and un-ego/emotionally involved anesthesiologist visited our room days later, he quickly made the correct diagnosis, patched the leaks, and the headache was gone in 15 minutes. Three days of needless suffering while a mother was trying to be present to the miracle of birth and also face the intensity of a newborn’s needs! Really unfortunate.
Lest you think I may be acting out some slanderous vendetta based upon the length of this letter, I will not recount the many other needless conflicts we experienced - just one: A pediatric nurse enters our room and announces herself with a cold intellectual look of superiority: "I am the baby expert". How exceedingly arrogant and emotionally disconnected to utter such a statement in the presence of the true experts - a mother and baby duo who were still emerging from the most intense experience of their collective lives.
It is fashionable these days amongst health care institutions and practitioners to publish brochures which wax grandly about "patient centered care", heaping accolades upon oneself regarding excellence in listening and so forth. As a health care professional myself, I know that I must constantly strive to remove my ego from my work, refining my listening, and considering how best to benefit the person before me. It is my hope that perhaps some of these feedback may find its way to the ear-heart of someone in the hospital who might share these values of listening, honoring the diverse needs of individuals.
Respectfully,
Jordan Van Voast, Hsieh Yu Chin
