Advocacy on Behalf of Midwives
Dear present and former midwifery clients,
We are writing to ask for your advocacy and support in our request for hospital privileges for our midwives at The Ottawa Hospital. Not all of our midwives currently hold permanent hospital privileges. At this moment, some of our midwives have temporary privileges which are ending between October 31 and December 31. We have asked for them to become permanent spots as there is demand in Ottawa and many of you had been put on a waiting list before you secured midwifery care.
Hospital privileges allow midwives to provide care to their clients in the hospital setting. Without them, we would have to transfer care to an obstetrician on arrival at the hospital. If our privileges are not extended, these midwives would continue to attend home and birth centre births, but will no longer be able to attend hospital births or assess clients in hospital. This would mean fewer options for choice of birthplace and an increased chance of transfers to obstetricians in labour for all our clients. If a labouring person needs in-hospital care, and there is no midwife with hospital privileges available, their care would have to be transferred to the obstetrician on call.
Despite our best efforts, we have not succeeded in resolving this situation with the hospital administration.
If you would like to advocate on our behalf, we encourage you to contact the administrators at the Ottawa Hospital.
Personal letters are the most powerful, but we wanted to provide a brief form letter for any of you who have your hands full and still want to provide support.
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Dear Dr. Mark Walker, Dr. Virginia Roth and Mr. Cameron Love,
As a midwifery client, I would like to advocate for the expansion of midwifery services in hospital. I am troubled to know that there are people currently on waitlists for midwifery care who will not be able to have a midwife due to restrictions on midwifery hospital privileges. As a proportion of these people will give birth out of hospital and at the birth centre, these restrictions impact choice of birthplace, as well as choice of care provider.
CMNRP recently released a Capacity Plan outlining the needs of our community and identified that “given women in the region requested increased access to midwifery services, midwifery privileging processes at each hospital should be reviewed and opportunities to increase the number of midwifery supported births at OBWC should be explored”:
http://www.cmnrp.ca/en/cmnrp/Capacity_Plan_Final_Report_2019_p4924.html
I look forward to hearing from you on this important issue.
Sincerely,
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Contact information:
1. Send an email to Dr. Mark Walker, Department Head of OB/GYN and Newborn Care, mwalker@toh.ca, Dr. Virginia Roth, TOH Chief of Staff, vroth@toh.ca and Cameron Love, President & CEO: clove@toh.ca. Request an increase in midwifery privileges so that more midwives can be hired, and more clients can access midwifery care.
2. Contact Consumers Supporting Midwifery Care, an Ottawa area grassroots group advocating for more midwifery care. You can network with consumer advocates and have your letter included on the CSMC site.
Website: www.midwiferyconsumers.org
Email: info@midwiferyconsumers.org