Tell-A-Vision   

 

The Project  
Taking the handcuffs off healthy childbearing women & the Maternity Care System that serves them....

Archive for Volunteer Readers
   

 


            To read Note from Faith about title and photo:

1. Identifying the Essential Qualities of Maternity Care - Evidence-based policies and a plan for action 

Excerpt: Whatever one’s individual opinion about the nature of childbirth, professionals and consumers both agree that the current maternity care system in the US is far from ideal -- we spend too much and get too little. We keep being brought back to the fundamental question of why – what are the forces that have shaped the century-long development of our highly medicalized system of obstetrical care for healthy women?

2.   The Health Assurance Act of 2010 Synopsis ~ 2020 vision for the 21st century ~ America can’t afford not to reform the way we provide and the way we pay for healthcare. In order to fix the long-term budget deficient, we must fix health care. For American business to compete successfully in the global economy, we must fix health care. In order for our own families and friends to be safe, we must fix health care. In order to have personal peace of mind, we must fix health care. 

Yankee ingenuity took us all the way to the moon, surely these same talents can help us upgrade to a HealthCare _2.0 system. Money being spent unproductively (or unwisely) can be redirected. Forward-thinking reform can introduce science-based change in how health care and medical services are provided and financed, while incorporating the benefits and cost-savings of scientific innovation and new technology.

Health ASSURANCE as a system of care can be achieved without taxing the middle class, rationing medical services, limiting the advance of medical science, turning the system over to government bureaucrats or raising the national debt. All it takes is a can-do attitude and the right expenditure of our plentiful resources. Two trillion a year is more than enough money to treat everyone and meet every genuine medical need. 

3. The Debate on Health Care Policy Reform
~ an exercise in pseudo-journalism

Excerpt part 4: The Numbers  and appropriate role of non-physician primary care practitioners: Everyday Non-urgent Health Care: Approximately 90% of all medical appointments are for non-acute healthcare. This category includes “self-limiting conditions” i.e., temporary situations that resolve spontaneous. Care for self-limiting and routine or simple follow-up visits should be provided by non-physician primary care practitioners. These ordinary, garden-variety complaints include mild illness or minor injury, psychological states such as anxiety or mild depression, normal biological conditions such as pregnancy, breastfeeding, newborn follow-up, well-woman care (contraception, pap smear), normal aspects of aging, life-style issues (diet, exercise and questions about sexual topics), school and work physicals, vaccinations, testing for STDs, managing a stable chronic disease, etc.

4. MaternityCare 2.0 Common Sense  ~ Childbirth for Healthy Women in the 21st Century ~ A new way for a new day ~  2006

Excerpt: In the early 1900s, there were two very different models of maternity care. One was the physiological model of care used by midwives and general practice physicians. The other was a newly emerging obstetrical model used by members of the obstetrical profession. Many people recognized the wisdom of having a single standard of care for normal childbirth, but couldn’t agree on the best form. Each approach had its own strengths and unique abilities. Some thought the best of both methods should be combined to create an integrated model. Others were convinced that traditional methods were out-dated at best, dangerous at worst. They believed it would be unethical not to replace them with the new medical procedures. This was the point of view that prevailed. In 1910 the obstetrical profession decreed that the ‘single’ standard for normal

5. Excerpts from: "Twilight Sleep -- Simple discoveries in painless childbirth" 1914; Dr. Henry Smith Williams, for Dr J. Whritridge Williams, Chief of Obstetrics Johns Hopkins 1911-1923

Synopsis of Dr J. Whitridge Williams' Plan  for a national system of Lying-in hospitals as described by Dr Williams

  Quotes from Dr. Williams' Book ~ Twilight Sleep -

6
Index ~Trapped  on the Wrong Side of History: The Last and Most Important  UNTOLD Story of the 20th century
 
The perfect storm that turned healthy women into the patients of a surgical specialty and normal childbirth into a surgical procedure:
Unpublished Manuscript by Faith Gibson, LM, 2008

A. Title Page & Notes on Vocabulary

Chapter 1: Early years as an L&D nurse in a racially segregated hospital in the Deep South

Chapter 2: Maternity Care for Healthy Women with Normal Pregnancies --> Defining the problem

Chapter 3: A Plan for Correcting the Problem

Chapter 4:  Historical back drop for 20th century obstetrical practices

Chapter 5: Practical Applications of the New Medical Science in the Later 1800s

Chapter 6: Hospitals BC – Before Common knowledge of microbiology: Hospital/Childbed Fever ~ Institutional Diseases of the 17th, 18th, & 19th Centuries

Chapter 7: Dr Ignaz Semmelweis and the Allgemeines Krankenhaus

Chapter 8: 20th Century Obstetrics in the US

Chapter 9: Architects of the ‘New Obstetrics’ ~ Listerizing Birth,  Circa 1910

Chapter 10: Catch-22 --> Interventions increases mortality rate, more deaths explained why so much intervention is necessary


The Lilly and the Rose

7. Overview and Ideas of fact-based fiction based on women's lives and reproductive experiences, including the first 1/3 of an manuscript entitled "The Lilly and the Rose"

(A) Publishing Plan for series of Fact-based Fiction
(B) Lilly & Rose ~ Story overview & ending
(C) The Lilly and the Rose    Chapters 1-10

(D) Ning Site for volunteer reader feedback
                                                                      
copyright 2006


About the title and choice of photo at the top of the page:

Despite the provocative heading, the purpose of this material is not blame or shame. Suffice it to say "mistakes were made". Now its up to us who understand the problem to "kiss it and make it better".

As the idiot savant of historical childbirth practices and politics, I  am convinced that our best chance of fixing the problem starts with understanding its history. Events both historical and contemporary that help us find our way out must be described, their insights identified and put to use and then we move on.  All parties (midwives as well as obstetricians) are to be defined by their future, not their past.

The present is the only place to correct the mistakes of the past and our only chance to unleash the hope and promise of bright new future. I see that as one of mutual cooperation, with physicians and midwives on the same team once again, working for the same goals -- healthy mothers and babies in a cost-effective mother-baby-father & family friendly system that all Americans (even ACOG fellows) can be proud of.

  Link to Ning Network for posting comments and feedback 

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