Newsweek has a piece on maternity wards refusing to let births be captured on video. According to the short piece, some hospitals, such as Harvard's Massachusetts General Hospital, have banned this practice due to concerns about malpractice, privacy, and interference with the process. If this trend grows, I can imagine some women selecting clinicians to attend their births based on the hospital's rules on video. A WebMD article on choosing your birth attendant and hospital makes just this recommendation, that women inquire as to whether video taping is permitted. As I browsed the web for other pieces on this issue, I found discussion board entries where women complained that they expected to be able to capture video, but were not allowed. If you do plan to have your birth on video, you'll need to check your provider's and the hospital's policies first - in some cases it's outright prohibited, while other facilities have less restrictive policies.
Locally, Vanderbilt's policy states, "Patients and/or family members in the perinatal area are allowed to Photo/Video deliveries with the permission of the mother and health care providers with consideration of photo angles, privacy, and confidentiality. Permission is documented in the Medical Record," and includes several stipulations about required documentation. If you are aware of other local policies, please leave them in the comments.
What do you think? Would a video ban make you consider changing obstetric providers/hospitals? Is it reasonable to prohibit taping on the grounds of potential malpractice lawsuits? What does it indicate about how traditional providers view childbirth if every birth is presumed to be a potential disaster?
As of right now, I don't see any prohibitions against live-blogging a birth. Hmmm....
Related:
Lawsuit-Minded Doctors, Hospitals Restrict Delivery Room Videos
Crackdown on Videotaping in the Delivery Room
Legal Implications of Birth Videos
List of tips for making a video of a birth
Technorati Tags: childbirth; hospitals
MeSH: "Videotape Recording"[MAJR] AND ("Labor, Obstetric"[MeSH] OR "Delivery Rooms"[MeSH] OR "Parturition"[MeSH])
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