Medical unions are opposed to the evolution of the statute of midwives towards more autonomy. According to them, it could destroy the delivery rooms and endanger the patients.
Tomorrow Thursday, midwives will be officially on strike for 100 days. In this battle that they have waged for their autonomy with the Ministry of Health, these professionals are demanding in particular access to the status of hospital practitioner (PH). Indeed, even if they exercise a medical profession, they have always had the status of “paramedical”. But, on the eve of a new meeting at the ministry on their status, the midwives of the Collective (1) have just suffered a setback. Several medical unions today formally opposed the empowerment of midwives.
The risk of destructuring delivery rooms
In two separate press releases, hospital doctors and a union of obstetrician gynecologists alerted to the negative consequences of the possible change in the status of midwives. For them, moving towards more autonomy for midwives risks “destructuring” delivery rooms and endangering patients.
In addition, even if they recognize that the “deficit of recognition of midwives must be understood”, these hospital practitioners want this file to be closed quickly, “because this movement generates in particular in the rooms of delivery deleterious tensions for all the professions that rub shoulders with them, and ultimately for women, ”wrote five inter-union associations of hospital practitioners (SNAM-HP, INPH, CPH, CMH, Avenir Hospitalier).
Childbirth, always at risk
In addition, they recall that the current balance in childbirth is centered on “the multi-professional and complementarity. “They also underline in this regard that” a so-called physiological childbirth quickly becomes at risk, and it is the gathering of teams united around shared protocols that makes it possible to maintain the safety of parturients. “
Another argument put forward, but more surprising, the inter-unions of hospital practitioners also warn all midwives and the public authorities about the adventurism which would consist for them in leaving the hospital public service, to move towards a status hospital practitioner: poorly regulated working time, dramatic retirement conditions, growing submission to the hospital hierarchy, etc.
A second union of gynecologists is opposed to this autonomy
Finally, after the National College of French Gynecologists and Obstetricians (CNGOF) which in December opposed midwives as “first recourse” during pregnancy, it is now the National Union of Obstetrician Gynecologists of France (Syngof ) which intends to alert the public authorities to the consequences of slippages in the practice of certain midwives.
For these gynecologists, “the empowerment of midwives, driven by the current climate of turmoil, cannot be achieved at the risk of patients. This is however the case if midwives deviate towards gynecological monitoring beyond the physiology to which their skills are limited. ”
And the latter recall that in “different regions come back accidents, for example after inadequate insertion of IUD, undiagnosed by midwives.” Information on the skills of midwives should not suggest that they can in complete safety, ensure the gynecological follow-up in the same way as the doctors of medicine ”, they conclude.
Despite these attacks, the midwives warned yesterday, indicating that they “are still so determined”
(1) ONSSF, CNSF, CTFC santé sociaux, National Association of Midwives, Cnema, SNECMA, Anesf
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