Obstetric violence - legs forced open against my will

[NibliaBiblia]

When I was in labour with my daughter, the midwives spent twenty minutes trying to force my legs open to get me flat on my back with my legs up. There was no emergency. It was so they could get a better CTG reading. I physically resisted for as long as I could and verbally told them to stop. They didn't stop until I gave up. After that they did other things without my consent, but I did not they to stop them again.
I complained to the hospital and they have done nothing. I complained to the police and they told me there must have been an emergency. I've complained to the NMC and the CQC. I hope they will do something but it's a long process so I won't know for a long time.
The police used to say that domestic violence was a private matter. They used to say that if you got in the car/went into the apartment/were drinking then you must have agreed to it. I think this is exactly the same type of justification, applied to equally criminal behaviour.
I don't think my experience is abnormal. I think this is fairly routine. They thought that when I gave up that meant I consented.

Prosecution unlikely if what happened doesn’t meet legal definition of rape. This is where it would be helpful to talk to someone at a rape crisis center.

No it actually IS the case.

a dr can say you need an emergency section due to fetal distress, you can refuse. What’s the alternative, the doctor knocking you out and cutting the baby out without your consent? No.

a patient can refuse any type of intervention. You can refuse to have you appendix out in the case of an appendicitis, you can refuse chemo, you can refuse blood products.

might not like it and it might lead to really poor outcomes but the dr can only explain the rationale and reasons why they are saying xyz is needed/ urgent, they can’t force you.

Useful information. Thank-you. No testing was done, and the second and third doses were not given. I was told before labour that I would be given an anti-D injection so had one only fixed in my mind. Both nurses looked sheepish when I mentioned the original dose, suggesting that there had been a slip-up.

You don't have to prove financial loss to make a claim.

There should have been a kleihauer sent after birth alongside a sample of cord blood. If the cord blood shows baby is also rhesus negative then no anti D is indicated. If baby is a positive blood group the kleihauer meadures the feto maternal haemorrhage.

I've only seen one occasion where further doses were indicated. It does sound like yours was an error

The reason I was worried was because of sloppy record-keeping, and possible consequences if anti-D or another medication were given multiple times. I was also aware that I was alert and questioning what I was being told, which not all patients are and do. More fundamentally, it's unnerving for patients that something apparently simple is being mismanaged. I expect now the patient record is kept on a tablet.

It's horrible that that happened to you. I wish you all the best.

I think culturally we're just about getting around to understanding how pregnancy and the post-partum period is a high risk time for domestic violence as well as being treated horribly even to the point of abuse at work, but not yet that it is also a high risk time for violence at the hands of medical professionals. It's documented, but as shown in this thread, it's quickly dismissed, women are shamed and blamed for it.

There is a reason why the anti-medical scammers tend to target new mothers - they're more likely to have had a horrible experience at the hands of medical professionals that they've been blamed for and appreciate anyone who is willing to recognise, even with ulterior motives, that medical professionals can and have done harm - some intentionally, some through their own tiredness, panic and emotional dysregulation that mothers are so often accused, as we've seen. Also as we've seen, when women complain, we're told we should go without medical care anyways, feeding directly into those anti-medical scammers.

Well why were they touching you with your consent? Hmm? Because they or evil rapists, or because they were trying to keep you and your baby alive? You don't seem to be able to grasp this

I've no idea the intent of the midwives, but there is middle ground between mocking the idea of raping HCPs - which some medical professionals do to their patients - and it being about saving a baby who was born fine -- that the HCPs were tired and falling back to how they think things should be done even though a CTG in other positions is entirely possible. I've had the tracing band on my side and on all fours.

I was raped by a HCP when I was 18 and the explicit reason given through those laughing teeth was to teach me a lesson for asking questions. I was in a side room on an ob/gyn ward for hyperemesis gravidarum, door blinds closed, door locked, with that laugh.

The rhetoric around HCPs just being about saving people's lives, that I should submit to them because they know better, that it doesn't matter what happens to me as long as the baby is safe, that authorities will get involves if I don't fall in line and my absolute fear that any move against the HCP would only lead to more harm to my and my child meant I didn't report, didn't admit it outloud for years, cause who is going to believe a teen mom who should have just been a good little girl, done what she was told, and spread my legs (my questions were about why an internal exam was recommended) over someone who saves lives.

I'm sorry that happened to you, OP. It could be they considered your birthing under their care as 'implied consent' for them to manage the birth, but I totally understand how it can go. It happened to me too that lots of things happened that I wouldn't have consented to, or weren't given the choice in, during my first birth. I would have hoped things were better these days. I went on to have all the rest at home without as much as an internal examination being done. One did end with a hospital admission where things were done, but they communicated with me about what they were doing and why and it wasn't at all traumatic given I knew it was very necessary. I hope you are able to get a satisfactory resolution to this for your own peace.

Is this true though?

Say someone is in a car accident, and they have clearly hurt their spine. and theyre rolling about on the floor saying no I dont want to be held still...but you need to hold them still or they could end up paralysed? Does their consent really come first? I feel like most people would just do what they have to do to make sure that as little more damage is done to the person, and knowing they are not in the right frame of mind to make decisions you take the decision out of their hands?

I mean, I absolutely was treated like crap by my midwives (not all - about 50/50 but the half that were bad were really outrageously bad) so I'm not defending them. And knowing what it's like, op's notes won't reflect reality at all) but just wondering

It's a concern because they shouldn't have been able to get more doses. If we request anti D then it needs to have a reason for it, the blood Bank will not release a dose without a clinical reason. It's all numbered and has to be checked by two midwives. There's a big paper trail with each dose and any errors are SHOT reportable.

Yeah we have tablets now for making our notes.

I’m surprised how many posters don’t seem to realise this!

So much misinformation on this thread, I’m a HCP, if a patient has capacity they can refuse any treatment, monitoring, intervention etc they want to, a patient being pregnant does not change that, if you as a HCP continue despite them not giving consent legally you have assaulted them.

It does not matter if you think OP should have had the monitoring, should have laid on her back or should have just opened her legs, it doesn’t matter if there was a clinical reason or the baby was in distress, she can still refuse and if they continue they are assaulting her.

Also, I have absolutely seen and had to speak up to stop consultants and other HCPs performing unnecessary procedures and interventions on patients just to practice, get their numbers up to stay competent or demonstrate it to junior colleagues/students. I recently had to talk two consultant cardiologists and a senior nurse out of a completely unnecessary DFT (sedating a patient, putting him into ventricular fibrillation and then shocking him with his defib) purely because, by their own admission, they were bored and hadn’t done a DFT in a long time (because in the vast majority of circumstances they are no longer clinical indicated and are harmful).

So, unfortunately, I can believe some women have had episiotomies, forceps, ventous etc when it wasn’t clinically necessary.

It is the case, when a woman is pregnant she is the only patient. As long as she has capacity she can decline any care/examination/intervention/medication etc she wants, even if it leads to her baby dying, she has full bodily autonomy, the same as any other patient. You may not like or agree with that, but that is 100% the case. Her right to refuse consent, even if it leads to a disastrous outcome doesn’t cease to exist because she’s pregnant.

Wtf? I have a defib, it’s is absolutely horrific when it goes off sedated or not. Where did this happen? Please please say you reported this?

I reported it to my manager who said to leave her to deal with it, I was appalled, as were my colleagues, unfortunately, I don’t think much was done about it once they agreed they wouldn’t do it, as one of the consultants involved is the lead consultant.

He tried to laugh about it with me afterwards and said he thought I would be “up for it” as I used to work in a much larger hospital which had a lot more emergencies, I said to him that while I may miss genuine emergency cases that doesn’t mean I want to create them.

I have to say it’s really opened my eyes working here, how unprofessional and unethical a minority of HCPs are and how easily they get away with it, as many managers are not clinical so will just accept their reasoning for doing something, and they assume everyone always has good intentions (as many do in this thread).

You get good and bad HCPs, like with any other profession, but to blindly believe that every single one of them is always acting in the patient’s best interest is very naïve.

That’s awful OP. One of the reasons I had sections was to avoid being forced into stuff, examinations, cutting etc. I still had to put my foot down about stuff (eg someone forcing my legs open to put a catheter in even though I was saying no) and it was hard when you are feeling you’re most vulnerable.

I think as a HCP you should have done more than that. Where did this happen?

Than you for speaking up. I think that was incredibly brave and if more people did the same then others would think twice before abusing their position of authority as HCPs.
I'm sure the lead consultant could have made things very difficult if he'd chosen to.

I'm sorry you had things done to you without your consent. It's not right.
I get the point about "implied consent" but there's no consent implied when I'm actively resisting. No rational person thinks that given in after twenty minutes of physical force is consent.

I'm so sorry this was done to you. It's completely horrifying.

It meets the legal definition of ill treatment: care worker offence. It's also assault and battery, although unfortunately those need to be charged within six months so it's too late.
But the police have refused to investigate because they think that anything don't to a woman in labour by an HCP that beats some resemblance to maternity care is by definition not a crime.
That's discrimination in the same way that not investigating domestic abuse or rape because it's "your word against his" is discriminatory. They are removing the protection of the law from an entire class of people

So important to remember this.
In the States it is disturbingly common for women to be forced to have repeat C-sections because providers literally will not let them have a VBAC.

It's not hard to treat people like people. If you wouldn't walk up to some random woman in the street and start touching her without her consent then don't do it at work either!
If a woman is saying no, pulling away from you, resisting - you don't keep trying to force her until she gives up and complies.

They used to give everyone a shave, an enema, an episiotomy, and then immediately suction the airways and clamp the cord. We now know that all these things are unnecessary or actually harmful.
Our right to control our own bodies is sacrosanct for a bloody good reason.
I also find it very strange that there's an assumption that there's a conflict between my interests and my baby's interests. As if some random HCP cares more about my baby than I do? She's my baby. I want what's best for her more than anything else in the world. I will do anything to protect her. One of the worst parts of this for me is that i ultimately failed to protect her from them.
Whether I'm right or wrong or stupid, I did not and do not believe that forcing me onto my back was benefiting her. And that's my decision to make. They don't get to make decisions for me and my baby.

I find it odd that people think this could be the case. 🤷‍♀️