Comfort, convenience and continuity of care are among the benefits of the GP antenatal shared care program, says new mum, Rosemeadow’s Heidi Bailey.
Mrs Bailey, who gave birth to her first child, Georgia, on March 24 of this year, is encouraging other mums-to-be to consider using the service after her positive experience.
The GP antenatal shared care program is available to women across South Western Sydney who are likely to have an uncomplicated or low risk pregnancy.
Care is provided by the hospital clinic and the GP, and is designed to provide women with continuity of care with their GP throughout their pregnancy and afterwards.
Mrs Bailey said her regular GP, Dr Derek Tang, was registered with the shared care service and when he explained her maternity care options – the hospital’s midwifery clinic or shared care – she was “100 per cent I’ll go with you”.
“I really trust my doctors, Dr Tang and Dr Joyce at the same surgery – they’ve been my doctors for as long as I can remember and I felt really comfortable going there,” she said.
“It just made sense to me to have the same doctor the whole time, and GPs do the same checks as the midwives.
“My theory was, even if I did have the same midwife at the clinic, there was no guarantee that she would be on when I gave birth.
“I was in labour for 21 hours so I ended up having three different midwives anyway.”
Mrs Bailey, pictured above with little Georgia, said the flexibility of the care her GP offered was amazing.
“The doctors I see work Saturdays,” she said. “I was working Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, and my husband is a journalist so he works all sorts of crazy shifts and Saturday morning is pretty much the only time he doesn’t have to work. A Saturday morning appointment made it a lot easier.”
Mrs Bailey emphasised the importance of having a GP you trust, especially with your first child.
“It’s so scary, you don’t know what’s going to happen, and I felt comfortable asking questions and knew that I could trust what he would tell me,” she said.
“It’s also important that your husband trusts your GP as well because you’re doing it together.”
Dr Tang, from General Practice for Children and Young Families in Campbelltown, said the patients who preferred the shared care service were those who were in a low-risk group who had a long-term, trusting relationship with their GP.
He said busier patients also appreciated being able to make appointments to see him and to not have to trek to the hospital for each and every visit, particularly in the second half of their pregnancy when visits could be every fortnight or even every week.
“There’s not a huge amount of difference between the clinics and antenatal shared care – we follow the same protocols”,” he said.
“If we run into a problem we still get the hospital obstetrician to review the case.”
If you’d like more information about the antenatal shared care program, talk to your GP, call the antenatal shared care GP liaison midwife on 0402 792 820 or visit swsphn.com.au/antenatalsharedcareprogram
