I have a relevant anecdote–
My father is an MD and is 100% supportive of my choice to use a CNM in a hospital for the birth of his first grandchild. He also has an NP on staff in his department who he speaks very highly of. So there’s that.
No, you need to provide more of a post than “it’s not like that at all” when you are trying to defend the position that a cancer specialist is more qualified to deliver a baby than a certified nurse-midwife is.
Yes, because it’s simply not true in most modern hospitals. Nurses and doctors have separate specialties and separate chains of command. You have a nurse already in-thread telling you this, and telling you that as a student nurse she’s overruled doctors. Nurses don’t report to doctors, they report to nurse supervisors.
Heck, here are two org charts, first things that came up with a google search for “Hospital Org Chart”. Both of them clearly show that nursing and doctor staff each have a separate reporting line that only joins at the freakin’ CEO.
http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/strong-nursing/about/documents/NursingOrgChart.pdf
https://www.azkrmc.com/images/pdfs/orgchart.pdf
Purely anectodal but as an internist, I have delivered exactly one baby, 20 years ago. I’d rather have a firefighter deliver a baby in an emergency; they’ve had more recent training and experience. Absolutely no question would I defer to a CNM in an emergency; I have NO idea what to do with shoulder dystocia or if the cord is around the neck except what I vaguely remember from textbooks. Also, nurses have saved me from mistakes more than once (and I have saved them). Nobody gets through medical school without learning that you don’t ignore an experienced nurse despite what any book says.
Good point! My order of choice would be CNM, direct entry midwife, paramedic, OB Nurse, lay midwife with lots of experience…then you, psychobunny. No offense. 
Likewise, if I needed a c-section and an OB wasn’t available, I’d rather have a GI surgeon than an neurosurgeon or orthopedic surgeon. At least the GI guy is familiar with guts and layers and layers of soft tissue.
Reminds me of some of the most hated questions on our Nursing Management tests. “You’re the nurse supervisor of a 20 bed general surgery floor. You have one RN with 10 years experience, one recent graduate RN, an LPN and an RN floating from OB with 2 years experience. Which patient is the best assignment for each staff member?” The OB floater will get the 1 day post-op colostomy patient, because at least we can assume he’s familiar with abdominal surgery and narcotic pain relief.
Damn, I was hoping that would go to a post by Phlosphr saying he’d talk to his wife about giving birth at the birthing center.
Really phlosphr, why don’t you do that? There’d be a big boost in safety for the kid and only a slight decrease in rainbows and unicorns.
Also, Broomstick please don’t think you have me stymied by your last post re: the Nigerian woman. The thread has moved on so I’m not responding (plus you just repeated the same faulty thinking you used before, so there’s really nothing new to say).
Patently untrue, my good man.
Your post is my cite.
Yeah, well, I’m trying to accept that it’s OK for people to be wrong on the internet. Only having partial success so far (and being wrong in a way that could hurt someone’s baby is of course a special case).
Ha ha ha - you so funny. You ARE responding, as **Mrs. Whatsit **said, your post is my cite.
YOU are employing the same unethical as well as faulty reasoning, you can’t come up with a valid response, but you can’t let it drop either. Like I said, you so funny.
OK, fine, I admit it. You have out-witted me, dear Broomstick. I can’t think of a good response to your latest display of argumentatve razzle-dazzle, and I was hoping I could throw in a little soft shoe and leave with my pride intact. But no, you got me–yes, I am most assuredly as gotten as got can get. Oh sad sad day . . .
“Birthing Center”?
OK comrade, you and all your socialist pals can go to the Birthing Center, where government doctors can tell you what do to, and then perhaps you can send your toddler to the government run creche, where it will be raised with good Marxist ideals of sharing their legos!
I think that most folks would want to stand for FREEDOM, rather than following the herd, and doing what they are told.
This,
You’re way off the mark here, Dio.
I’d rather have an OB than a CNM myself, but I had a marginally high risk pregnancy and LOVED my OB (who had also been part of my infertility team). And I wouldn’t fault anyone who chose a CNM. But yeah, I’d go for the EMT in the ambulance if he’s worked over five years over my cousin the cardiologist - the EMT has probably delivered a baby or two.
Frankly, I think a woman has a right to deliver at home, attended by the pizza delivery guy in a gorilla suit while sitting in a bathtub of orange jello if she wants to. I just don’t think that is WISE, although honestly, its going to work out fine more often than not. Its her body and her baby, and until that baby is born, I think she gets the power of choice, even when it isn’t in the best interest of the fetus - who is a fetus until it is born.
i.e. I can call other people’s parenting choices stupid, not agree with them, think they are dangerous - but unless someone is actually abusing their child - and this doesn’t cross into abuse, I simply am getting to be judgmental. We can’t wrap our kids in bubble wrap, and I think the slippery slope of managing risk is one I really don’t want to start down. I delight in my skateboarding, snowboarding, baseball playing, mountain bike riding son’s hobbies. Even if sometimes I close my eyes when he takes a jump.
You’d want a paramedic before an OB Nurse? For that matter, you’d want the CNM before the OB Nurse? I thought the CNM basically was an OB nurse…
No. I wrote about the difference in one of these two threads, but I’m too lazy to go back and look for it now.
Basically, an OB Nurse is an RN who works on an OB floor, so he or she is used to *assisting *at a lot of births and can help out a lot if things go nasty, but he or she does not have the training, experience or legal standing to be the sole attendant at a birth outside of an emergency situation. And a paramedic, likewise, isn’t qualified to attend solo outside of an emergency, but statistically, has probably seen more precipitous births with no assistance than an OB Nurse has. My SO, as a paramedic, has delivered over 50 babies on his own in his career. Not enough to qualify him to hang out his shingle as a baby catcher, but more than your average OB Nurse has.
A CNM is an RN who *also *has a Master’s Degree in Midwifery. It’s essentially all of the OB rotation doctors go through in medical school, minus the surgery and…honestly, I’m not sure what else, if anything, it’s lacking. I can’t think of anything else that needs to be shunted to an OB, except for “this person’s risks put her at a high chance of needing a c-section.” A CNM can handle preeclampsia, eclampsia, shoulder dystocia, placenta previa, gestational diabetes, etc. A CNM is qualified, both legally and in terms of education, to be the only person present at the vast majority of births.
I’d choose a fucking veterinarian over a “direct entry midwife.”
Arguably, that is a reasonable stance.
Though I’d prefer a vet with some sort of specialty in mammals as opposed to, say, the avian vet I take my parrots to. Different sort of reproduction and all.
Absolutely! A primate vet would probably be a pretty good choice in an emergency, actually. Although I understand our pelvises are tilted differently than other primates and that can make childbirth different for us.
Hadn’t thought of it, but I’d put it on the list just after OB Nurses, I think.
I’d prefer he not be fucking *during *the delivery, though.
I would as well. You wouldn’t catch me using a direct entry midwife unless we were the only two people trapped on the NYC subway while I was in labor. But I’d choose her over the pizza delivery guy.