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The Intrauterine Device
I’ve got a poster in my examining room that captures a lot of interest; I call it my pasta poster. It’s a picture of a random assortment of interesting IUDs throughout history -including a couple of stones (Yes, stones have been used!). It often serves as a springboard for discussion of contraception back in the consulting…
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Doctor on Call
“Are you going to be there to deliver me, Doctor?” It is a question I hear each time I see a new obstetrical patient and one for which I have to admit I am never prepared. After all, the patient has come to see me because either they or the referring doctor feel that I…
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Choosing a doctor
There are age-old dilemmas in choosing a doctor, aren’t there? Choices often have a way of seeming problematic, even insoluble, when considered in the abstract and all the more so when they have to be made for real. Theoretically, I suppose, they should be made after due-diligence, as the lawyers would say. One merely sets out a…
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The Doula
For some reason, there are opposing sides in this issue and it’s hard even to approach the topic without raising the eyebrows of one side or the other. It’s not at all clear to me why there should have to be this division, but I’ll attempt a dispassionate consideration of the concept and then venture an opinion for…
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Antenatal Genetic Testing
When I bring up the subject of antenatal genetic testing, most of my patients don’t even bat an eye: it’s just what you do nowadays. Of course you want to know as much about your unborn and developing baby as possible! But there are some -just a few- who look at me suspiciously, searching for a reason I…
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Forceps
Forceps seem to be controversial in some quarters. To be clear, I don’t find them at all controversial nor do my patients by and large. But I realize that for some, forceps are the standard bearers for all that is intrusive and perhaps malevolent in obstetrics. Everybody seems to have an aunt or second cousin somewhere that…
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Pain
I don’t want the title to imply that I am some sort of expert on pain; I am, like most people, pain averse. I do not necessarily understand pain; I see it in others and assume it has similar characteristics in common with what I experience and so I avoid it whenever feasible. I understand when others have…
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Health care is…
Health care is one thing, access to health care is another. There are many barriers to its acquisition: in some countries it is money, in others,availability of services. But for most non life-threatening health care needs, an underlying problem in all I would suspect, is fear. Not so much fear for safety as a feeling of unease: is…
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Health
Do we expect too much Health? Or perhaps less controversially, do we expect too much of Health? Are our expectations realistic or even attainable? Do we really know what Health is -or for that matter, is not? It’s an important point and one that should not be dismissed as mere academic quibbling. Perhaps, to paraphrase St.…
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