Delivery Rooms no Longer Welcoming their Close Up
The birth of a child is the most amazing day of a parent’s life. As a parent myself, there are no words to describe the feeling of witnessing one of your children being born and setting your eyes upon them for the first time.
Because of this, parents have been photographing and recording the birth of their children for years. A video or photograph can capture this momentous occasion in a way that words never will.
Sadly, many parents may never have the joy of reliving this joyous occasion. A disturbing trend is sweeping the country that seeks to bar parents from recording video or taking pictures during their child’s birth.
That’s right. Parents across the nation are being told they cannot capture this moment like so many proud mothers and fathers have done before them.
The obvious question is why?
While hospitals have cited a need to reduce distractions, I find it hard to buy this explanation. It is true the availability of cameras has certainly led to an increase in delivering room recording, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there is an decrease in delivery room safety. Cameras, after all, have been in delivery rooms for decades and have only gotten smaller and more discreet.
With the small size of cameras and the advances in cell phone recording technology, it is very difficult to see how a loved one using a hand held camera can impede a trained doctor from doing their job safely. If this was just about safety, then a better solution would be proper instructions for those loved ones who seek to record the event.
These rules against recording may have much more to do with doctors and medical professionals attempting to shield themselves from the use of photographic and video evidence should an issue of malpractice arise.
As a recent article in the New York Times points out, these bans are coming during a time a when medical malpractice suits are increasingly being supported by video evidence.
In that same article, Dr. Erin E. Tracy, an obstetrician at Massachusetts General Hospital (which bans recording) says, “I want to be 100 percent focused on the medical care, and in this litigious atmosphere, where ads are on TV every 30 seconds about suing, it makes physicians gun-shy.”
This is interesting because here you have a prominent doctor, a teacher at Harvard Medical School, pointing to the possibility of a lawsuit as a factor for the ban. So, because there is a chance the video may be used as evidence in the event of a mistake, the parents should be deprived of the opportunity to capture their own child’s birth?
Whatever happened to transparency? It is not as though these parents are recording for the purpose of gathering evidence. Believe it or not, it’s not about living in a so-called litigious society at all – it’s about parents wanting to record an important moment in their life. Simply put, if the doctor and medical staff perform their job correctly, the existence of a video is not evidence, but rather a beautiful and important moment captured in time.
I would say to hospitals and doctors, do not penalize parents for the sake of protecting your own interests. While you may see thousands of births a year, these parents see one. And they should be allowed to capture that moment.
Category: In The News
