The need of labor units in rural hospitals

A few years back when a young lady delivered her baby in a hospital in North Carolina. It was a cold Valentine’s Day, because there was an ice storm going on at the mountain roads out of the town which made the towns impossible to pass through by vehicles.  Her baby suffered from breathing problems then because the lungs weren’t developed yet. It was Dr. Murphy who conducted the delivery, she is a family doctor who helped her gave birth that night. She is also the doctor who stayed in the neonatal ICU then of the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Salem. This is just 1 ½ hour drive away if an infant consultation is badly needed.

Things were scary then, doctor Murphy recalled. However, with her and the 2 other doctors trained in Obstetrics job along with some of the finest and well versed nurses handing the twenty-five bed hospital labor and delivery care unit, the instance then was easy to manage and the mother and baby are both safe.  But things are not the same at present. The same hospital they were talking about is now closed just as other hospitals in the rural areas. Their delivery and labor units were closed and the pregnant women must travel to Winston Salem, Virginia or to Galax to be able to reach the hospital. These are all more than half an hour drive away by car if the weather is fine.

Women and their need for immediate medical care during delivery

For women who need prenatal care, they must travel quite long and if they need to get help during their labor, it may be troublesome for them, doctor murphy added. Around 500,000 women give birth yearly in different rural hospitals, but their access to labor as well as delivery units has been deteriorating. The complete figures are spotted, but there is an analysis of more than 306 rural hospitals in more than 9 states with big rural populace has been discovered that there are 7% closed units from 2010-2014.

Labor and delivery unit closers are still ongoing, through time, most of the nearby hospitals will be gone and women must go to farther hospitals to seek medical attention. There are lots of factors those results in the closure of the obstetrics services in most rural hospitals. One reason is that the obstetrics units are quite costly to maintain. Some of the rural hospitals might just be delivering babies lower than 100 daily. The labor as well as the delivery unit is not different with an ICU for various diseases. The levels of staffing are also high, there must also be 1 nurse assigned for every patient, the rooms must have monitors and other equipment.