My name is Dr. Alan Lindemann and I am taking this opportunity with this blog to speak up about a topic often in the news these days—maternal mortality.
Why am I discussing this topic instead of a professor of obstetrics at a well-known medical school? Or a committee member on some board charged with getting to the bottom of this really shameful maternal death rate in the U.S.?
While committees meet, I’ve been in the trenches delivering about 6000 babies with no maternal deaths, no mothers with strokes or eclampsia, and no babies with cerebral palsy. I have learned a lot over my years of delivering babies.
You won’t find this information in medical journals, medical school, or organizations looking into the causes of the U.S. maternal death rates.
Increasingly physician care of patients is being pushed aside by the outside business interests which have overtaken our healthcare system. The biggest threat to safe delivery is delay and denial. When many people are involved with medical decisions, few will step up to the plate and take responsibility for a decision. No one feels in charge. So delay and denial become the treatment of choice. And it can be a deadly choice.
In providing the information I have gathered from many years of practice, I hope women will be able to recognize deny and delay when it presents itself in their care, and become able to work around the obstacle.
