Catholic Hospitals

[NM11046]

What is the Question that this thread is asking?

 

Is this a Pro life / Pro Choice thread?

 

I am religious but not so much that I follow the teachings as if I was a cult member, but in the same breath, this doctor accepted this position at this hospital knowing full well of the limitations she had to adhear too. Obviously she is no longer there and stated she would never work at another catholic hospital.

 

Regarding the mother and the unborn child, I understand the quandary but certain medical institutions throughout the US are limited in what they can do for many reasons, other than religious beliefs. How do those patients deal with those types of scenerios?

 

BigRedBuster asked a good question above that has not been addressed. What do other religiously ran hospitals do?

I think the idea that "she knew where she was working" is misunderstood. She was a student that was assigned time there in a rotation of medical school. She saw what needed to be done medically and was frustrated that she was unable to do it at the institution that the patient had been admitted to, and that no other institution would take the patient because they struggled to understand why "she just couldn't do it". A doctor pledges "first do no harm" and this is difficult to adhere to when you are not allowed to practice medicine fully within the walls of a hospital that can be admitting patients from all sorts of backgrounds and beliefs.

 

I don't think the thread has a real question - it's more of a thoughtful situational example of how circumstances aren't always black and white, and that our most educated and talented physicians have limitations put on them if they're under the umbrella of a religious hospital. Do patients that go there get the best care with such limitations?

 

Similar question about the person who works as a cafeteria worker, medical assistant, janitor etc at one of these locations, and because of it has limitations on what their health care insurance will cover or provide.

 

I have no clue if other hospitals affiliated w/religions do - it would be interesting to know.

[zoogs]

She rotated to the hospital, TG. And that's the thing: if not her, then somebody else will. She made the decision not to work at a Catholic Hospital again. That's not the issue. The issue is the existence of religious mandates and the health outcomes that result for people who are patients there.

 

Whether she, or anyone else, works at that hospital, patients in need of care such as this woman will go there.

 

Regarding the mother and the unborn child, I understand the quandary but certain medical institutions throughout the US are limited in what they can do for many reasons, other than religious beliefs. How do those patients deal with those types of scenerios?

What are those many other reasons? I don't believe, for example, "not being a full-featured hospital" is an acceptable counterpoint. That clearly was not the case here.

[Scratchtown]

No Catholic hospital would give an abortion, that is pretty obvious. When you work at one you should know that. Abortion is a terrible option and is accepted by our society for the feelings of the mother, no one even cares about the life liberty. or property of the child insider her. The lady should not have blamed the hospital when she knew fully what institution she was working for.

This is the problem.

 

I think Abortion is horrible and I wish more was done to prevent it when the mothers are healthy. However in this case when you are deliberately putting the patient at risk by NOT delivering the baby, maybe the baby survives, maybe not. But you have to ask yourself the question...what the hell are we really doing?

 

It's not an easy situation.

[zoogs]

To add to that, the baby doesn't survive in this scenario. Have to be clear about the medical case facts; there wasn't a "maybe" here, and the induced labor *is* an abortion and not "let's see if the baby survives!"(Please correct me if I'm wrong).

 

That's the thing. We tend to think never having to go through an abortion is a complete credit to our choices -- and not to the probability of not going through what women like this one went through. While it's a solid probability, it's a coin flip and the odds against are not trivial.

 

I think this first hit me in reading the Vox piece about the Hyde Amendment:

 

Low-income women aren’t the only ones who suffer from Hyde, Horvath-Cosper said. She provides abortions in a hospital, and several times a week she sees patients who have “devastating” prenatal diagnoses, where the pregnancy is wanted but the fetus will likely not survive ...

 

"...My baby will die, are they saying I just have to continue the pregnancy and wait for that to happen?’ And I have to say, yeah, that's exactly what that means. It feels heartless. It feels uncaring.

 

“To put somebody through a doomed pregnancy when they don't want to continue it, and worry about the baby being born and experiencing pain — it's devastating for everybody involved. And it makes you feel really angry at the people in the offices who are making these laws, who don't sit with these families and know what it feels like.”

Same thing, but in this case it's a national law (hope that's the correct terminology) restricting via insurance, and not a particular type of hospital's religious mandate. It just seems like we're hurting people.

[HuskermanMike]

She *did* know that, and it killed her that those restrictions put this patient at risk.

 

What would you have done, HuskermanMike?

I wish a lot of mothers cared for their children inside their womb like she did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gianna_Beretta_Molla

 

It has a lot of gray area on this subject. I am never in favor of giving an abortion and doctors should work to the best interest of the lives of the mother and child. A deliberate abortion is not that option. If the life of the mother is at risk, they may operate to save her of course, but again the deliberate attack on the child is not right. If the child dies as an unintended consequence to save the mother it is not unjust in my opinion.

[Mike Mcdee]

To add to that, the baby doesn't survive in this scenario. Have to be clear about the medical case facts; there wasn't a "maybe" here, and the induced labor *is* an abortion and not "let's see if the baby survives!"(Please correct me if I'm wrong).

 

That's the thing. We tend to think never having to go through an abortion is a complete credit to our choices -- and not to the probability of not going through what women like this one went through. While it's a solid probability, it's a coin flip and the odds against are not trivial.

 

I think this first hit me in reading the Vox piece about the Hyde Amendment:

 

Low-income women aren’t the only ones who suffer from Hyde, Horvath-Cosper said. She provides abortions in a hospital, and several times a week she sees patients who have “devastating” prenatal diagnoses, where the pregnancy is wanted but the fetus will likely not survive ...

 

"...My baby will die, are they saying I just have to continue the pregnancy and wait for that to happen?’ And I have to say, yeah, that's exactly what that means. It feels heartless. It feels uncaring.

 

“To put somebody through a doomed pregnancy when they don't want to continue it, and worry about the baby being born and experiencing pain — it's devastating for everybody involved. And it makes you feel really angry at the people in the offices who are making these laws, who don't sit with these families and know what it feels like.”

Same thing, but in this case it's a national law (hope that's the correct terminology) restricting via insurance, and not a particular type of hospital's religious mandate. It just seems like we're hurting people.

 

Having close family and friends that are in the medical/OB field, I have actually asked them about this. One stated it was the hardest consult he had ever had to do in his 2nd year of residency. The baby had ruptured the womb and had caused the water to break at just before 20 weeks. There was nothing they could do to save the child. The hospital he was doing his residency at was in Texas and was not allowed to do a miscarriage D and C because there was still a fetal heart rate. The only thing they were allowed to do was manage the pain, provide infection control measures, and offer comfort. It's much like the video in the OP. He had to tell the once happy expecting parents the only option was to wait for the baby to die in a day or two and then do the D&C. To me, it feels cruel to do that to the now grieving parents.

[NUance]

The doctor said that there was a 0% chance of the fetus recovering, and yet she opted to give antibiotics and wait. WTF? Why wouldn't the doctor send her to another hospital right away, rather than waiting around until the patient was in dire shape? Clearly the hospital isn't opposed to sending the woman to another hospital—they put her in an ambulance when her condition deteriorated.

 

Sounds to me like the blame is on the doctor for delaying the decision to transport the woman to another hospital where she could receive the treatment she needed.

[NM11046]

The doctor said that there was a 0% chance of the fetus recovering, and yet she opted to give antibiotics and wait. WTF? Why wouldn't the doctor send her to another hospital right away, rather than waiting around until the patient was in dire shape? Clearly the hospital isn't opposed to sending the woman to another hospital—they put her in an ambulance when her condition deteriorated.

 

Sounds to me like the blame is on the doctor for delaying the decision to transport the woman to another hospital where she could receive the treatment she needed.

Did you watch the clip? She called numerous places to try and transfer the pt to get the procedure done and was met with "why don't you just do it there?"

[zoogs]

I'm not a doctor. It seems most likely to me that there was a reason she couldn't transfer her right away to another hospital for the procedure to be performed. We also don't have a sense of the timescales involved here.

 

Even if the individual doctor is at fault here, that shouldn't obscure the issue as it exists. The full Sam Bee clip mentions that in some areas, this is a patient's only local option. There's also a story of a woman who was transferred in time, but the other hospital couldn't operate because they hadn't been given the patient records from the original one.

[NUance]

 

The doctor said that there was a 0% chance of the fetus recovering, and yet she opted to give antibiotics and wait. WTF? Why wouldn't the doctor send her to another hospital right away, rather than waiting around until the patient was in dire shape? Clearly the hospital isn't opposed to sending the woman to another hospital—they put her in an ambulance when her condition deteriorated.

 

Sounds to me like the blame is on the doctor for delaying the decision to transport the woman to another hospital where she could receive the treatment she needed.

Did you watch the clip? She called numerous places to try and transfer the pt to get the procedure done and was met with "why don't you just do it there?"

 

 

Yes. I watched the clip. She reached out to a number of hospitals only after the patient had gotten much worse. Did she mention trying to transfer the patient before 1:55 in the clip--when the patient had gotten much worse? Because it sounded to me like the doctor gave her antibiotics as a matter of course, and only tried to transfer the patient after things got worse. Did you watch the clip?

[zoogs]

We don't know that, presented with this patient, the doctor didn't:

 

1. Prescribe the best care she was allowed to to respond to the immediate situation

2. Observe her as she was required to do following that care

3. Frantically phone other hospitals at the earliest possible opportunity (whether because it was important to do #1/2 first, whether because of the rules or perceived rules, etc).

 

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/05/hospitals-pregnancy-abortion-reproductive-healthcare-catholic-rules-report

 

Thursday’s report is only the latest to suggest that dangerous conflicts between the directives and mainstream medicine are not imagined.

Even if we're willing to accept one doctor made the wrong choices in one example presented, I would make the above counterpoint: that the unclear lines and conflicts created by these mandates lead to the poor choices to begin with.

 

It's the equivalent of a team rule that requires a quarterback to close his eyes until he finishes his dropback, and then criticizing him for not making the best remaining decision after opening them again.

[Atbone95]

You're mad a Catholic hospital wouldn't perform an abortion..?

 

Edit: That last comment wasn't very fair of me. Nvm.

[NM11046]

 

 

The doctor said that there was a 0% chance of the fetus recovering, and yet she opted to give antibiotics and wait. WTF? Why wouldn't the doctor send her to another hospital right away, rather than waiting around until the patient was in dire shape? Clearly the hospital isn't opposed to sending the woman to another hospital—they put her in an ambulance when her condition deteriorated.

 

Sounds to me like the blame is on the doctor for delaying the decision to transport the woman to another hospital where she could receive the treatment she needed.

Did you watch the clip? She called numerous places to try and transfer the pt to get the procedure done and was met with "why don't you just do it there?"

 

 

Yes. I watched the clip. She reached out to a number of hospitals only after the patient had gotten much worse. Did she mention trying to transfer the patient before 1:55 in the clip--when the patient had gotten much worse? Because it sounded to me like the doctor gave her antibiotics as a matter of course, and only tried to transfer the patient after things got worse. Did you watch the clip?

 

I did. I guess I assumed the opposite of what you did. She knew the baby wasn't going to live, and that the mother would get worse, I can't imagine that she waited to try and transfer her. I'm sure she had to get in touch with her Attending (she mentioned that there wasn't one there at the time) and get approval or direction to transfer and giving fluids and pain relief, antibiotics would be automatic course of treatment.

[zoogs]

@Atbone, yes, I'm mad, although this isn't about my being mad or not.

 

It's about women who go to a hospital requiring medical attention, and a religious directive interfering with the hospital's ability to provide her with the best medical options.

 

Are you cool with that?

[Atbone95]

@Atbone, yes, I'm mad, although this isn't about my being mad or not.

 

It's about women who go to a hospital requiring medical attention, and a religious directive interfering with the hospital's ability to provide her with the best medical options.

 

Are you cool with that?

Honestly, yes. A Catholic hospital is a private institution, just like any other Catholic entity. They should have the right to provide services that align with their beliefs, and should not be forced to ever compromise those in any way.

 

That said, I could see an argument for needing to provide better alternatives for emergency transportation to address problems such as this. Or simply removing the red-tape that makes situations like this dangerous. IMO, the hospital could have provided a quick (potentially no cost, since they are intentionally deferring?) medical transport via ambulance the second she walked in the door and they diagnosed the issue, knowing they wouldn't solve it. No calling, no approval - do it.