Patient Advocates

I recently found a site and blog called Every Patient’s Advocate with information on patient advocacy. It was quite interesting. Here’s the deal in my field, we already have a ton of patient advocates, probably more so than any other medical specialty out there – doulas.

Doulas are specially trained to help women and their families make decisions about their medical care during pregnancy through early parenting. Doulas help women research and find out all of their choices, not just the choices on the surface or readily offered by an eager doctor or midwife, but all of the choices. Doulas help women gain the information that they need to make informed choices that work for them – individualized care, not cookie cutter obstetrics.

Doulas can help with the following:

• 50% reduction in the cesarean rate
• 25% shorter labor
• 60% reduction in epidural requests
• 40% reduction in oxytocin use
• 30% reduction in analgesia use
• 40% reduction in forceps delivery

_{Information was obtained from Mothering the Mother: How a Doula Can Help You Have a Shorter Easier and Healthier Birth, Klaus, Kennell, and Klaus (1993).}
In addition to doulas, think of how the childbirth educator serves as the educational arm of the pregnant woman’s life. Health education in general is taking a lesson from Lamaze and other leaders in the field of health education and trying to encourage patients to know something about what’s going on rather than blindly putting their faith in a fallible system.
Have you secured your patient advocate yet? If not what are you waiting for?