[ozmidwifery] Liability ruling in Weekend Australian

[Tania Smallwood]

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16318814%255E23289,00.html     Liability ruling delivers fuel to midwife debate Adam Cresswell, health editor August 20, 2005 DOCTORS and midwives are at loggerheads over their legal liabilities from new-style birthing units after a hospital sued an obstetrician to recover a share of the $7.5million it was ordered to pay for a birth mishap involving a midwife. Obstetricians say the case vindicates their fears they will be held responsible for the work of midwives, who are pushing for expanded roles and recently started a second midwife-led birthing unit in NSW at Belmont near Newcastle. But midwives such as Robyn Rudner, who works at the Ryde midwifery group practice in Sydney, the state's first public midwife-led birthing centre, said doctors' fears were overblown. She said while the Ryde and Belmont units had good safety records, midwives would remain legally responsible for any mistakes they made. "We are fully responsible for women under our care as midwives, and when we transfer women to a hospital we remain responsible (for their own actions)," she said.           The legal case, adjourned this week in the NSW Supreme Court, was mounted by the Greater Southern Area Health Service in NSW. The doctor being sued was an on-call obstetrician when the baby was born in September 1995. While the delivery was handled by a midwife in the obstetrician's absence, the health service claims the doctor failed to adequately supervise the case. It was ordered to pay the mother $7.5million in April 2003, and is now seeking a contribution from the obstetrician. Pieter Mourik, a retired obstetrician from Albury, NSW, claimed the case bore out fears doctors would continue to carry the responsibility for mishaps in a midwife's delivery. Dr Mourik said the case was "dynamite" and it was "unheard of" for a hospital to sue a doctor for a procedure carried out by another health worker. However, Andrew Bisits, director of obstetrics at John Hunter Hospital, who has helped develop the Belmont unit, said while "the whole atmosphere around pregnancy and childbirth ... has degenerated into this very negative and fearful experience", units such as Ryde and Belmont were "an antidote" to such fears.