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If you've figured out what hospital you want to go to, now you've got to figure out what's
the provider that's best for me. There are 3 basic groups of providers that deliver at
the Swedish system. The first would be an Obstetrician/Gynecologist, this is sort of
what everybody knows. An OB/GYN is going to be able to take care of a patient throughout
their pregnancy and take care of pretty much any potential complication that could come
up. So, they can take care of a patient that might be high-risk and of course a low-risk
patient. Unfortunately sometimes things do come up during a pregnancy and an OB/GYN would
be able to take care of them whether they have just a normal delivery or if they end
up needing a C-section or some type of assisted delivery. The second option in the Swedish
system, and there's a large number of providers in many of the community clinics and many
of the Swedish clinics that are family practitioners with OB privileges. Family practionrs can
take care of a patient through any low-risk pregnancy. If the pregnancy becomes high-risk,
they might need to refer out or consult with an OB/GYN. If the patient ends up needing
a C-section, they'll consult with an OB/GYN the OB/GYN will end up doing that delivery.
They can also give continuity of care. They can take care of the baby after the baby's
delivered and throughout the child's life. The third group is Midwifery group and that
is a group of women who have done nursing school and have additional training and then
done a certified nursing midwifery program. A midwife will take care of low-risk pregnancies.
I think they tend to have more time and give more one-on-one care. If the pregnancy becomes
high-risk in any way then they would be referred on to an OB/GYN and same with the delivery.
If they become high-risk they'll have an OB/GYN that backs them up and takes over if necessary.
A laborist is an OB/GYN that is in the hospital 24 hours a day to back up family practitioners
if they need it and even to help the OB/GYNs that are doing their deliveries. When patients
need C-sections there's always 2 doctors available to do C-sections. The laborist can assist
on those. So for family practitioners if they need to ask questions, they need to consult
or they need to refer to an OB/GYN to do a C-section, they can use the laborist and both
First Hill and Issaquah have laborists in the hospital 24 hours a day.