Health chief denies Gladstone maternity is an “experiment”

Medics fear the Queensland hospital at the centre of a maternity bypass crisis has been used as a test case to see if it could run with little involvement from obstetricians. But the state’s top health bureaucrat has dismissed ‘unfounded allegations and wild conspiracies’.

Medics fear that Queensland Health has been experimenting on the women of Gladstone by using the maternity service bypass as a test to see if it could run as an independent midwife model with little involvement by obstetricians.

And the state’s top obstetricians warn such a regimen would see babies or mothers put at significant risk.

“Obstetricians have been aware for some time that there is a push for independent midwife models,” rural obstetrician and past president of Rural Doctors Association Australia John Hall said.

Dr John Hall is president of the Rural Doctors Association of Australia. Pic: supplied

“There is concern among doctors that Gladstone is being prepped for exactly that.

“Bombshell comments from the health minister and the director-general certainly make it clear they support such models, with Yvette D’Ath saying that obstetricians were not needed in more than 90 per cent of births.

“What the bureaucrats fail to realise is that yes, 80 per cent of births go okay but there is no way of predicting who will be in the 20 per cent with serious problems.

“Most pregnancies appear low risk until they don’t and life threatening complications can happen in a heart beat,” Dr Hall said.

“In my language, bypass means that a unit does not accept labouring women, it’s a closed shop, yet it seems Gladstone has continued to allow women to birth without access to emergency surgery or obstetric care.

“If women are birthing there should always be an staffed operating theatre and doctors and nurses with anaesthetic and obstetric skills, he said.

Dr Hall said that the health minister’s comments were divisive, creating an unnecessary divide between doctors and midwives.

“Rural doctors have enjoyed a long history of working closely with midwives and know that midwifery care is essential for any successful birthing unit.

The rural doctor said that the only safe option for women was a collaborative relationship between doctors and midwives.

“If it is a them and us situation, it’s a recipe for disaster,” he said.

Queensland Health director-general Shaun Drummond said that any talk of Gladstone being an experiment was not true.

Shaun Drummond, Director-General of Queensland Health. Picture: Richard Walker

“Unfounded allegations and wild conspiracies, which is what these are, will not help achieve a solution. The issue at Gladstone Hospital – and a number of other hospitals across Queensland – centres solely on the obstetrician shortage.

“We are working around-the-clock and investing heavily in recruiting these specialists so we can reinstate birthing services in hospitals that are on bypass,” he said.

“Increasing demand in regional areas for birthing services means we need to strengthen midwifery models of care. That’s the reality. However, there is no strategy to replace obstetricians with midwives.”

Midwives at Gladstone have revealed to The Courier-Mail that staff are highly stressed and are being put in untenable situations.

Two brave Gladstone mums told their stories claiming they would have died if a midwife at the hospital had not called an off-duty obstetrician to race back to the hospital to aid with their complex and dangerous cases.