There are a number of prenatal care options available to women in Hamilton.
- Midwives
- Obstetricians (aka: OBs)
- Family Practitioners
- General Practitioners & Obstetricians in tandem
Each of these options is slightly different but knowing which one you want to use is a very important decision to make and one you may need to make almost as soon as the lines show up on the stick.
FPs
The old model of the family doctor who came to the hospital (and once upon a time, even your home!) to help you with the birth of your baby is all but extinct. It's hardly a sustainable model. It's tough to be called out at any time of night our day to attend a birth when you have two to three dozen patients in and out of your office four days a week. Can you imagine being the receptionist who has to reschedule those days when the doc calls in that they are at a birth?!
These days in Hamilton we have the clinic model. A large team of Family Practitioners work together to care for a very large number of clients prenatally. In the same way that midwives work in small teams, you are often assigned two or three FPs that you see regularly during pregnancy. During birth, the FPs borrow from the Obstetric practice model and have a rotation of doctors on call and ready to run over to the hospital for your delivery. That is, if they aren't there already.
FP clinics often handle more than 500 patients a year. Some clinics also employ Nurse Practitioners, Social Workers and Lactation Consultants to provide specialised services to their clients, who sometimes come from at-risk communities and can benefits from enhanced community services and support. That's not to say that middle class families don't seek FP clinic support prenatally. The clinic model is able to support a wide range of prenatal needs.
All prenatal visits happen in the clinic. During birth, when women are admitted to the hospital of their choice, the on-call FP associated with your clinic will be called in to care for you. In the meantime, the hospital nurses oversee your health as they do for OB clients. In low risk births, the FP can catch the baby. If the situation warrants it, however, a OB can be called in to consult or assume your care. In this way, FPs are similar to midwives: neither are surgical or high risk specialists.
If you would like a Family Practitioner to care for you during your pregnancy, you can call one of the clinics directly. Keep an eye on Birth In The Hammer in the near future when we bring you listing of local FP Clinics.
