- Zero Epidural Rate
- Women who can push out a baby in one or two pushes and who think a long push is over 15 minutes.
- Women who want to walk and move around in labor and are surrounded by female family members that think birth is natural and not scary.
- Fast labors
- Women who want to go home in early labor
- Women who labor at home until things are really cooking.
- The hard working and under appreciated nurses (somethings are the same no matter WHERE you are)
- An understanding of what a midwife is WITHOUT having to explain it.
- A preference for midwives as birth attendent
A Few Things I'm Not Going to Miss:
- Putting my foot into my shoe in the middle of night to feel a cockroach (a large one) squirming around in there. (Insert high pitched scream and shoe flying across the room).
- Sleeping in the linen closet on a gurney.
- Routine episiotomies (by OTHER practitioners)
- Latex gloves that are moldy and disintegrate as soon as I put them on.
- Lack of systematic health care
- Going to the "delivery room"
- Lack of adherence to Universal Precautions (gross and scary)
- Chromic suture as the only suture
- The lack of a neonatal crash team (hmmm I think there is a name for this but I've been without one for so long...it's like some sweet memory) Good thing bad babies are so few and far between.
- Lack of urgency when a crash csection is called.
- 20 minute Decision to Incision Protocol
- Women who refuse induction when they are REALLY, REALLY, REALLY overdue.
- Babies going straight to the nursery because there is not enough staff to monitor babies during transition.
- Lack of position changes for delivery.
- No IUPCs
5 comments:
Holy crap, Liz! Is that *your* hand underneath that cockroach? And I thought Atlanta roaches were bad!
Sorry that is NOT a photo of a cockroach from Samoa. It's some random photo I found on the internet of the biggest freakin' roach I could find. It's symbolic because they can seem that big.
I happened to stumble upon your blog today, and your list of things that you will not forget and all sounds just like mine from 10 years ago. I was the manager of the maternity ward there for a year in 1997 and had 2 of my 4 children there. Thanks for the walk down memory lane.
Amber Letuli
aha! i just returned to seattle from a holiday back home (both samoas for me). always interesting to see what on-island health care providers think of the atrocious public health management (my opinion) on the territory. nice blog. great takes. good luck in ptown!
That is a Madagascar hissing cockroach. They are actually quite friendly, relative to the standard gross American roach we have here. They are actually sold quite commonly in the states in pet stores.
-Paul
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