Ms Patterson would like us to forget these issues, as well as the ethical concerns which will not go away. In her haste to regionalise, she has failed to provide the relevant data about the risk of this experimental treatment. This despite the promise given to the former mayor, an elected board member, to provide the risk information.
Ms Patterson's proposal was to be rationalised by the so-called crisis in the current service - a crisis of manpower under which the maternity service nevertheless functioned for a decade. The risk of service failure is essentially over with the coming of two new ob-gyn doctors. Her current proposal is, therefore, one of choice, not of necessity.
It's intuitively obvious that there would be added risk to that inherent in normal childbirth in the proposal to transfer 400 pregnant women 72km further for delivery.
If Ms Patterson can produce the facts about the risk of moving those mothers 72km for delivery she should produce those facts forthwith. If not, she should admit that the proposal she has authored is fatally flawed with respect to inability to obtain informed consent. Without effective informed consent based on acknowledged risk and benefit, her proposal of an untested procedure with foreseeable potential harm is little short of human experimentation.
For a patient to give consent to treatment, that patient must be informed as to the risks and benefits of the procedure. If I, as a patient, learn that the risks outweigh the benefits I am entitled to refuse my consent. Ms Patterson's proposal, absent knowledge of the actual added risks to patients, cannot provide informed consent and hence actions under the proposal are fraught with possibility of unethical conduct for medical staff involved. To mitigate those risks, I offered three alternatives which nowhere are addressed by Ms Patterson.
The first of these builds on sustaining the current service through co-operation between DHB and the council, to ensure a place for the new doctors and provide for their required supervision. Ms Patterson, in what appears an effort to move the goal posts, sees supervision as a high hurdle, but actually it's one that can be accomplished with community support.
The second alternative, to move doctors not patients, has already received endorsement from MP Chester Borrows.
The third alternative - designed for an evidence-based approach in accord with requirements for human experimentation with voluntary patients, where an element of risk is acknowledged and maximal support offered - was not mentioned by Ms Patterson. Perhaps because it would require our taking time to get it right.
Instead, Ms Patterson seeks credit for the numbers of meetings. The credit should be for listening, and there's no evidence of that.
Instead, she offers assurances without basis in fact, that her plan would not expose the patients and the medical staff to effects of ethical violations.
Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
