Maternity Care Experiences Explored – Margie Apa

Margie Apa, Director – Strategic Development

We released a report on Monday this week on the experiences of 61 of our most vulnerable Maaori and Pacific women including teen mums.  We commissioned this report to give us a consumer perspective on how this particular group of women perceive their whole maternity healthcare experience, not just delivery.  To put it in context, 47% of our more than 8000 live births a year are to Maaori and Pacific women.

We are damned if we do and damned if we don’t aren’t we? The media make a beeline for the juicy sound bites and focus on the reported experiences in Middlemore Hospital and delivery suites (5 pages out of an 80 page report!).  We cannot offer a different perspective on some of the problems the women identified because they didn’t complain or tell us about it at the time, meaning that we couldn’t investigate and do something about it as we would normally have done.  And yet, that’s the point isn’t it?

The report provides some pretty raw feedback.  One of the many observations of women is that they DO feel judged about their circumstances by “any mainstream agency” (p52).  This is not unique to them – it’s a human reaction to feel vulnerable when you are unwell or in need.  But for these women, they feel it to the point where they don’t tell us when they experience something that doesn’t seem right to them and even worse, they stop accessing care. This should worry us.

Many of us might be surprised because we think we’re communicating well.  We are a multi-cultural workforce serving a multi-cultural community – it is no surprise that we face communication challenges.  But it is worth checking ourselves from time to time. These skills don’t come naturally to most of us.

Most importantly, ALL of these women wanted to have healthy babies and be well for their babies.  This group of women, especially teen mums, deserves as much of our care and respect as women like me who feel a bit more confident about advocating for ourselves.  Our organizational values apply to everyone – no exception.

Samoans say that the measure of a Matai or chief is known by how well they look after the most vulnerable in their clan.  We’ve got to make sure that even our most vulnerable, and those who don’t have a voice, get to experience great care as the majority of our women do. This is the true measure of whether we really are the best.

Margie Apa, Director of Strategic Development