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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Birthing centre disappoints

By: Editorial

Posted: 01/12/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

It is too early to say that the birthing centre the provincial government built last year was too ambitious in its designs -- it has been open for births just more than a month -- but the numbers do not stack up in its favour. It will require vigorous recruiting of midwives on the part of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority to fill the expectations it has created among Winnipeg's expectant mothers.

Midwife education in Manitoba has not caught on as hoped. The University College of the North shut down its northern program, unable to attract the necessary staff, and the nine students of its new Winnipeg bachelor of midwifery program cannot graduate until 2014. Meanwhile, the birthing centre has seen six babies born, and a clamour of interest from pregnant women.

The WRHA has added two more midwives to its ranks, bringing to 22 those it employs, and is hoping to hire another six. Seven midwives are working out of the centre. The College of Midwives of Manitoba's notes that there are 42 practising midwives in the province and its 2010 annual report remarks upon the disappointment of falling numbers in that year.

While the WRHA expects to hit the centre's capacity of 500 births a year within its first 18 months, it seems an overly ambitious target given the challenges, and calls into question the sophistication of the planning that went into building a stand-alone, $3.5-million birthing centre. Last year, there were 482 midwife-attended births in the city, about 75 per cent of which happened in hospital, the remainder at home. Few mothers who choose home births are likely to transfer to the centre, and the birthing centre will siphon only a portion of those who use midwives from the hospitals. Unless recruitment plans prove dramatically successful, the high demand for a more relaxed, natural setting for births is unlikely to be accommodated.

The idea is that a birthing centre can help attract midwives to Manitoba, but all provinces are competing to recruit or keep their supply. Health Minister Theresa Oswald made no bones about this project being her cherished baby -- she cried at the centre's opening -- but a more cautious start would have addressed the critical difficulty the college has identified with attracting students into the profession and practising midwives to Manitoba.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 12, 2012 A10

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