Please Ask Your Doctor To Wash His Hands by Andy Mayer 
Is it possible to create a global list of great maternity staff and hospitals that honour women in birth? Can someone set up a website or resource to acknowledge health professionals that encourage and support women? We need a place where we can seek feedback on medical birth facilities or specialists who engage in obstetric intervention where they deem it necessary BUT the parents feel like they had choice and are satisfied with their birth experience. Where is that site that lets us know that a particular hospital routinely performs fundal pressure and episiotomies? It seems apparent to me recently that women are afraid of what they have heard about certain doctors, midwives or hospitals and are keen for a recommendations to base their experiences on. The TripAdvisor on the medical world. Imagine that?
Due to the fact I live abroad and deal with many expatriate women (and an increasing number of repatriates) I get asked to recommend a good ob/gyn and hospital. This has been more common here in Mongolia and there are many reasons as to why. The biggest being the poor reputation of health care. The medical training in Mongolia is highly questionable and only a lucky few have access to training abroad or even access to research, as Mongolian is their only language. It is difficult to increase knowledge when your language is not one which books are translated into.An increasing number of women (including) locals leave to birth in Thailand or Hong Kong because the hospitals can be pretty awful here. The obstetric procedures can be outdated and there is no high quality neo- natal or maternal health care if something goes wrong.
It’s a crappy situation to find yourself pregnant in a country with an actual or perceived poor quality health system and dreading birth. It is supposed to be an exciting time and a time of nurture and growth not a time for escalating fear and concerns about whether your doctor or midwife actually bothers to wash her hands before she touches you! Seriously there is a sticker on the wall next to the delivery “beds” here in UB at the largest public hospital that says “please ask your doctor to wash his hands before examining you” Now that is just inexcusable to any educated person. What is wrong with the doctor who does not know to wash his hands after examining the patient before? That is a rhetorical question by the way!
I am not suggesting name and shame but really we need to encourage women to feel confident to birth locally by sharing positives about the institution and its staff and forewarn about negative procedures so that they may reduce that happening to them. Ultimately it is us the customer that needs to take a bit of responsibility in preparing for birth and communicating effectively with our health practitioner to reach our birth goals. We should not have to take responsibility for the doctors washing their hands though!
On second thoughts a website rating doctors and hospitals won’t take off I think it’s called slander in legal terms! Bummer back to the good ideas drawing board!!!!!!
I will start off the global list of recommended practitioners, this could be a very long list! I will expand it on our Facebook page…
Melbourne, Australia – Dr Peter Jurcevic or Dr Lionel Steinberg
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia- Dr Unarjargal or Dr Dashka.
Jeddah, Saudia Arabia – Prof. Ahmed H.Warda
Manila, Philippines – Dr Henson
belly rubs
andy xoox