Questioning Health Care Professionals 👍🏼

🙃 Why you should question health care professionals 🙃

(Including me!)

I recently had an interaction where a client was having a small conflict with her partner who felt that particularly due to her increasingly complex pregnancy, questioning the HCPs may be unnecessary and possibly dangerous.

A very understandable concern.

HCPs are generally highly trained and have a lot of experience.

They usually follow guidelines that are drawn up to keep people as safe as possible, and their often read many pieces of research.

I would argue that they often enter their profession to make a difference and help people in times of need.

So following their advice should be in our best interest, right?

Well, my suggestion will ALWAYS be to ask questions of your HCP, unless you are 100% happy with what is suggested to you by them.

Why? Here are a few reasons:

🤔 they don’t know you, your body and your baby as well as you do. Ever.

🤔 they have not lived your previous experiences. They don’t know your future plans. They don’t fully know what is informing your decision making.

🤔 the things most people wish to avoid (say, induction) are very very normal to most HCPs and don’t seem like a big intervention anymore due to the frequency they occur. So the threshold for recommending them is LOW.

🤔 their care is often shaped by their own professional and personal experiences. For example as an obsterician, most of the births they see are complex and *already* complicated when they get involved. There are many midwives who have never seen a truly physiological birth. And the assumption that birth is complicated as a default prevails.

🤔 many HCPs absolute overriding focus to to eliminate or lower *risk*, without much awareness or bother that they are adding danger in other ways. A local obstetrician tells people that induction doesn’t really have any risks other than making the birth experience less positive. To her this is a no brainer, as in her opinion we can just get over the birth experience. Anyone who works with birthing people on a long term basis KNOWS this is not how it works. Mental health is JUST as important as physical health.

🤔 there is little willingness and awareness on how to keep more complex pregnancies/births as normal and physiological as possible. So pushing for this, which ultimately might keep you safer, is crucial.

🤔 fully individualised care is the safest care. It is IMPOSSIBLE to provide individualised care without constructive feedback from the person providing care to, so your input is CRUCIAL to communicate your needs.

🤔 very few situations are absolutely black or white. All have grey areas and areas for choice, compromise and accommodation. But without asking about those areas and making your preferences clear, they don’t tend to get proactively presented as people stick to guideline recommendations in the context of time limits during consultations.

Does your questioning have to potential to cause defence or offence? Yes, unfortunately. The attempt to shape our own care is sadly often seen as an attack on HCP knowledge, expertise and experience.

Reminding defensive HCPs that you are simply trying to come up with an individualised care plan for yourself with their support can put the ball back into your court.

But don’t stop questioning us. Without this questions our practice will never evolve, neither do we learn how to provide truly individualised care which we KNOW is safest ❤️