Pregnancy
Pregnancy is both an exciting and stressful time in a woman's life, whether it be her first or fourth pregnancy. Your body no longer feels like your own, and it can be difficult to recognise the little problems from the potentially big ones. Globe Medical accredited General Practitioners are here to help.
Obstetric Shared Care is a program designed to allow some of the routine antenatal check ups to be done by your own nominated and accredited GP. A Shared Care doctor undertakes on-going training to ensure the tests and tasks they perform comply with current public hospital antenatal care protocols. The primary objective of Shared Care is to ensure the health and wellbeing of both mother and foetus during the pregnancy, and the safe delivery of the baby in the Hospital. This is achieved through the sharing of information and responsibilities between the GP and Hospital, including routine screening, identification of antenatal issues for both foetus and mother, and management of those issues. The busy expectant mother, benefits from long waits in Hospital Outpatient Clinics.
Antenatal care is a great opportunity for the mother to receive advice and education about common antenatal, birthing and postnatal expectations. Both your GP and the Hospital can provide information and advice about birthing classes, breast feeding, nutrition, labour, postnatal depression etc.
How We Care
Dr Jane Allen is accredited to provide antenatal shared care for our existing patients at Globe Medical, and is extremely experienced in the field of women's health.
It is a great advantage for the doctor to be familiar with your medical history and to have been on the journey with you through relationships, contraception and pregnancy planning. As part of the Shared Care program, our accredited General Practitioners provide routine antenatal screenings (including referrals for regular ultrasounds), tests and ongoing education about pregnancy, giving birth and post birth expectations.
In some cases, our doctors identify clinical complications in either the mother or foetus, that may place a pregnacy in the "high-risk" category. Should this occur, management of "high-risk" pregnancy is taken over by the hospital specialists. The referring GP is kept informed of developments to ensure that continuity of care is maintained. After the birth, the Hospital will usually hand back care of mother and new born to the GP.
Effective communication between the expectant mother (and father), their General Practitioner and hospital obstetric staff is the key to providing the mother and foetus with safe care.
For more information about starting a Shared Care program at Globe Medical, download the "Obstetric Shared Care at Globe Medical" letter from the "Policies and Forms" section of the website.