Many women are reluctant to have students involved in their
care, making it difficult for trainees to have adequate
contact with obstetric and gynaecology patients, the Otago
District Health Board's new women's health clinical director,
Dr Alex Teare, says.
It was difficult for students and trainee specialists to get
the chance to examine women patients and undertake "hands-on"
procedures such as palpating a woman's abdomen during
pregnancy to check on the progress of the baby, he said.
An education programme was needed to raise the profile of the
teaching status of Dunedin Hospital in this area.
Making a decision about student involvement when women might
be stressed or in pain was not ideal, so such a programme was
needed in the community, he said; through general
practitioners and midwives.
This would allow women the chance to think about the
possibility of student involvement before they arrived at the
hospital.
Dr Teare said he respected it was women's right to decline
involvement, but felt more could be done to inform them about
the value of such contact in the training of future
generations of doctors.
It was not "guinea pig" or "experimental stuff", but a matter
of trying to demonstrate to trainees what a normal pregnancy
was and how it could change.
He suspected the decline in the number of women opting for
student involvement over recent years was related to the
emphasis on women having choices in pregnancy.
Dr Teare is also a senior clinical lecturer in obstetrics and
gynaecology at the University of Otago.
• In his hospital role, Dr Teare replaced Dr Susan Fleming,
who resigned this year because her husband had taken up a new
job in Canada.
