Campaign for breast-feeding rights
March 29
Midwives have launched a campaign to protect the rights of breast-feeding mothers. Despite years of public education about breast-feeding, women can still be asked to remove themselves from public places throughout much of Britain, campaigners say. Midwives, student midwives and mothers have teamed up for the campaign, The Way Nature Intended. Campaigners are heartened by a new law passed in Scotland. Scottish law now states that a breast-feeding mother cannot be asked to move from a place where babies can be bottle-fed. The campaign has been dubbed The Way Nature Intended and has an on-line petition at thewaynatureintended.org. Campaigner Jacqui Green said: “Currently a mother can be asked to leave any premises, or to move to a back room or toilet to feed her child. The same is not asked of a bottle-fed baby.” Monday March 28th 2005 Should the role of lead clinician be reinstated? March 28 – The culture of health care in Britain is leading to “fragmented” care, a palliative care consultant has claimed. Dr Craig Gannon, who works at Princess Alice Hospice, Esher, Surrey, UK, writes in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) that he believes multidisciplinary working has its drawbacks. He outlines the case of an elderly woman at his hospital who died from kidney failure following lapses in care, which was delivered by numerous members of six teams spread across three sites. Dr Gannon writes: “The presiding tick box culture allowed and even fostered suboptimal assessment.” Each of the six teams did what they were required to do, but “such a potentially star-earning description would flatter the care actually delivered and underestimate the resources wasted,” he writes. “Worryingly, it was the system – increasingly engineered to medical technicians rather than to professionals – that seemed to be responsible,” he adds. Dr Gannon thinks that someone needs to take charge. “We need to revitalise the role of the lead clinician,” he writes. “Clearer ownership of patients should minimise oversights generated by ever expanding teams and should improve continuity of care. “Healthcare systems must minimise errors and should require an approach that is as evidence based as our approach to prescribing,” he concludes. BMJ editor, Dr Fiona Godlee, adds: “How many such stories lurk in the corridors of today’s NHS, and what do they tell us? If this is, as Gannon implies, a result of recent reforms, what can we expect from the next phase of the government’s NHS improvement plan unveiled by Nigel Crisp last week?”
source: BMJ Volume 330 p735
