ACOG Survey: Complications Related to Home Delivery
Sunday, August 30, 2009 at 12:28AM Here is a screenshot of the ACOG survey, “Complications Related to Home Delivery” as it appeared on their web site on August 5, 2009 that caused a stir among women’s health advocates last week. The rallying cry on Facebook went something like this:
*Tell ACOG your birth story! *
ACOG has a new database to collect anonymous data on “unsuccessful home births.” *Let’s derail their plans and flood the database with entries on SUCCESSFUL home births!*It will take less than five minutes*, but having even 25 people do it will send a loud and clear message and may force them to take it down due to bad data. At the very least we can force it into the members-only area, where far fewer OBs will bother to fill it out.
The survey is now password protected for ACOG members only.
After reading the angry comments from doctors on blogs like KevinMD.com a few months ago about online doctor rating sites, ACOG’s survey made me laugh a little. One doctor asked, “Isn’t our issue with pseudoscientific surveys per se that do nothing except provide advertising space for those “fine young men and women (God knows, you got to love them”) - as we say in the south - who turn a dollar based on the ignorance and ill will?” Another called them “unscientific crap.”
One person’s crap is another person’s attempt to paint an overly negative portrait of home birth and women’s health care options in the name of protecting its members from unnamed phantom lawsuits, I suppose.
If anyone needs the full size screenshot for any reason, such as not having bionic robot eyes that can read the tiny, tiny text, e-mail me.
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Reader Comments (16)
With the surveys, how do they know every one is filled out truthfully?
I wondered why I couldn't get onto the website yesterday. I guess they had so many rotten tomatoes on them that they closed it down!
What really gets my goat is that they list all these things as complications FROM "home delivery." Um, earth to OBs: what do cord prolapse, malpresentation, rupture, UGR, preterm labor, or ANY of the others have to do with where you give birth?
Gahhh. This is not only bad science, it's bad science in reverse. Come up with a result, THEN analyze data, and only data that is carefully constructed to prove your hypothesis? I'm thinking they all got Fs on their volcanos and hamster mazes in middle school.
Is it not ok for them to collect data on this if everyone else is collecting data on cesarean sections? Let's not be hypocritical here. If it's good for you then it should be good for them as well.
The Other Side... "everyone else is collecting data on cesarean sections."
So it's black-or-white with home birth and cesareans being opposites? Why make it so polemic and us-versus-them?
You're reading that I don't like that they're collecting data. I don't care. I pointed out the potential hypocrisy of crabbing about how unfair and unscientific online doctor review sites are, then throwing something like this up online. Unscientific, indeed!
Jill, I'm stealing this screenshot for my own post about this, since I can't link to the site to show it.
No prob at all, Jill.
The Other Side, as was said; this isn't "collecting data" this is an online survey. Which is the opposite of good data, because of how easy it is to skew. Nothing is verifiable, therefore there is no trustworthy data to be gleaned this way.
And since doctors have those degrees and all, you have to assume they know this. And that therefore they are not actually interested in viable data, and were hoping for something to use as a political football.
Why did I have to be offline last week, of all weeks? WHY? I missed my chance!
I hate Robots.
I don't even know why the scientists make them.
It's utterly ridiculous. I don't even know where they are coming from - that OB's should be inputting data on homebirths? That they are only inputting data on homebirths that have transferred to hospital? All the questions presume a poor outcome. There are no choices in the dropdowns or checklists for no complications or easily resolved and temporary challenges during the birth. ACOG should be ashamed to post this, as it only reveals their bias and agenda, instead of their desire to take an honest look at the situation and act in the best interest of babies and families.
- Age 40, Gestational diabetes, 41 1/2 weeks, successful, complication free home water birth after C-section and hospital VBAC
What's funny is there's just nothing scientific about this. It's all hearsay and opinion and what, are they planning on fact checking all the entries that are made? What's going to stop a bitter doctor from filling it out 80 different ways with all the heaps of bad homebirths he's "seen"? Step one: Make a decision about homebirth based on consensus, with no evidence. Step two: A year later open a survey that's meaningless and poorly worded (your bias is showing!) to try to back up decision.
*slow claps*
My favourite part about this was their blurb on litigation. The implication was that these women were partaking some 'dangerous' behavior such as homebirthing, then transferring to the hospital and 'blaming' it on the OB by suing him.
Judging by the unforunate number of trauma forums online, that is not the case. Every mother who has ever been assaulted, birth raped, ignored, had a procedure against consent, etc knows this is bogus. Homebirth transfers are infamously connected with a higher rate of assault and birth rape. I have heard countless stories of being held down, being given epis while screaming no, being sewn up w/o a local, having their child taken away w/o medical cause, having CPS called, etc etc. I say, sue the living daylights out of them! They should be worried about liability!!!
check out this new study on planned home births out of Vancouver, Canada:
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/rapidpdf/cmaj.081869v1?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=homebirth&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=date&resourcetype=HWCIT
there were fewer neonatal deaths and complications with planned home births versus hospital births with physicians or midwives.
finally, the hard facts necessary to play hard ball with those who continue to argue that home birth is dangerous.
It is a shame and a sham when ACOG would solicite home birth horror stories instead of cleaning up it's own house. Here in Louisiana (which has one of the highest perinatal morbidity and mortality rates in the US) we have 3 medical schools turning out new OB-GYN's every year. We also have the lowest number of practicing midwives in the nation. Instead of working in conjunction with professional midwifery organizations, childbirth educators, and doulas; we have forced families into hospital settings where C-Sections rates are over 33% and climbing. The cost to our state is enormous. If ACOG is so interested in saving mother's and babies lives, why not join together to seek new venues to make true changes in maternity care that insure collaboration, choice, and access to care? It's time for ACOG to wake up and realize that consumer's deserve personalized, compassionate care. Women are not so easily bullied as they were in the past to do something just because " the doctor said so." Isn't it time for ACOG to change it's good ole boy image and begin the ground breaking business of changing it's own policies towards birth center's, home birth's and VBAC's. Maybe it's time they did so.How about a new survey based on the premise of how to facilitate collaborative care in a variety of settings?
Kathy, I'd love to see that!