Until We Meet Again: The Dissolution of a Practice

Gianna, daughter of Lindsey and Nick Martin, being welcomed into the loving hands of Shauna Zerhusen

It is with great sadness that we announce that The Christ Hospital has decided to dissolve The Christ Hospital Physician’s Certified Nurse Midwifery practice after only ten months.  We are sad for our women especially who took the great leap of faith to follow us, believing that we would be by their sides for the most important and intimate times of their lives.  We believed that this would be a permanent home for us, and we would never had asked women to follow us if we thought that this wouldn’t be the case.  For this we are truly sorry.  That fact that we will not be by our women’s sides, to be there for the birth of their babies, to see them through their journey to becoming parents, truly breaks our hearts.

 

The truth of the matter is this, health care is a business.  Women need to have choices in the type of care that they receive and they also need to let health systems know that money should not be the only force that drives the decisions of policy makers.  Our Midwifery practice had less than an 8.75% cesarean rate, a 4% episiotomy rate, a 70% natural child birth rate, all with exceptional maternal and neonatal outcomes. Yet our care was not supported.  We believe that every woman deserves a midwife for her obstetric and gynecologic care should she so choose.  We also believe that woman are best served when a partnership is created between midwives, their collaborating obstetricians and a hospital system that all respect and value the services each bring to the table.  We have found that recognizing such physicians and systems is harder than it seems, but it is possible.  We have been overwhelmed by the tremendous outpouring of support that we have received from our patients, fellow midwives, physician colleagues, friends and families.  We are very hopeful that we will find a new group of physicians to back us and we are actively working on securing a new home for our practice.  As we know more, we will continue to keep you updated here.

In the mean time, we understand that woman need to continue their care.  We know from experience that it is women who make the health care decisions for their families.  Moving forward, we hope that everyone is able to continue with care givers that provide the same level of service that we provided in our practice.

“Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.” -Maya Angelou