Program overdue

Peter Farago
A MIDWIFERY support group has called on Australian Nursing Federal and Barwon Health to solve an impasse preventing a new care system being implemented at Geelong Hospital.
Maternity Coalition Geelong president Melissa McFarlane said a proposed caseload system where midwifery patients would have the same midwife for their antenatal, labour and post-natal care had been delayed for 12 months as the ANF and Barwon Health management argued over changes to award conditions.
Ms McFarlane said the one-on-one midwifery care program required staff to be on-call so that expectant mothers could call for advice when they went into labour.
She said Barwon Health had made compromises in negotiations with the union but there were still sticking points stopping the care system from being implemented.
Ms McFarlane said if the impasse was broken Barwon Health would be the first Victorian hospital to offer the “world’s best practice” system.
She said hospitals in Western Australia, South Australia and New South Wales already used the model.
But Ms McFarlane said funding to Barwon Health also needed to be boosted to cope with an increasing birth rate.
“We are seeing dramatically reduced access to services for birthing women right along the Surf Coast and in surrounding rural areas,” she said.
“We are still waiting for the stalled one-to-one midwifery care program to be implemented at Barwon Health and we have a sky-high ceasarean rate at nearly 30 per cent, poor breastfeeding rates and increased rates of postnatal depression.”
Ms McFarlane said Geelong Hospital had worked hard to increase the level of care offered to midwifery patients but the one-on-one service would provide better outcomes to “high-risk” patients.
Divisional nursing and midwifery director of women’s and children’s services Therese Cotter said Barwon Health was still in discussions with the union and hopeful of an outcome in the next few weeks.
An Australian Nursing Federation spokesperson did not return a call for comment.
The Maternity Coalition will host a morning tea at Geelong’s Botanic Gardens from 10.30am today in support of a national protest calling on federal election candidates to support national reforms to midwifery care.