midwife's muse

Calling all Midwives and Health Professionals

Any Midwives, or even Doctors out there, who are reading this and have comments to register about the maternity services might like to go to this link to the Kings Fund who are currently collecting evidence for their independent review into the safety of maternity services. The closing date is 30th May. If it weren't for a Google alert I have set up I wouldn't know about this survey/review and I suspect that I am not alone in this.

Now for a 'God help us', hands up in the air, laughing at the extra demands being placed upon us, moment. Whilst midwives, and particularly community midwives are, on a daily basis, having to alter their practice, take on new responsibilities, fight their way through an ever increasing mountain of paperwork and try to provide women with the type of care they are being promised without the resources being in place, this message was relayed to us at a recent team meeting, 'Stop swearing in YOUR cars'. Apparently the university has said that student midwives have complained about the bad language used, whilst driving, by some of the community midwives. It has taken me two days to assimilate this latest edict, at first I thought it was a hoax, but now I realise that Big Brother really is trying to gain more and more of a foothold in my life. Now I've stopped laughing at the picture it paints, a middle-aged woman raging obscenely behind the wheel, I'm full of indignation. If the student objects to the fact that, on occasion, a midwife may comment on another road-users driving skills by the use of an expletive perhaps she/he is too precious to enter the profession. During her working life she is going to encounter many different cultures with very varying opinions on what is acceptable behaviour. Is she going to object whenever a woman a labour uses a word she finds offensive, particularly since most of these words can be heard on any TV channel, any pavement every day. How is she going to deal with the partner who is worried about his partner, finding it difficult to deal with seeing his loved one in pain and, in an effort to express his frustration with not being able to help, aims a swear word at the midwife? I'm not trying to excuse anyone who swears in an ordinary situation, but who hasn't released their frustration at another car driver by the use of some purple prose? During her training the student is in a rarefied position, she has a mountain of studying to complete, but clinically, and responsibly whichever midwife she is working with carries the can for any mistakes she makes, in other words, having a student out with you adds to the stress you are already under. All the students I have had out with me seem to have the most tortured personal lives which they share liberally during our time travelling from one visit to another. I accept this as part of my role as mentor, but it can really 'do your head in' when you are trying to find some obscure address and your passenger is bemoaning their life, answering mobile phone calls from an estranged partner and then bursting into tears. Can, or should, I be blamed for releasing my desire to throw her, and her mobile phone out of MY car, by transferring my irritation verbally to another road user?  I am also guilty of uttering the odd expletive between patient appointments at my clinic, it is my way of releasing tension and prevents me from being terse with women who are causing my clinic to run late for no good reason other than their ability to read everything on the web, but apply none of the advice given there to themselves. I shall calm down now and just hope that I don't have a student allocated to me, as I can't promise that I won't let my refined vocabulary slip away and allow myself to shout 'donkey b*******' at the next chelsea tractor that cuts me up.

19.5.07 11:01