Mrs. Rachel Tasker, a former official with the Alberta Medical Association, stated recently that twenty babies died during delivery in the last year in Alberta because of late arrivals of the attending obstetricians. She implied that the doctors were more concerned with their own convenience than with their patients’ well-being. According to Mrs. Tasker, Alberta had a very good record for live deliveries during the ‘70s but the situation deteriorated after the beginning of the “boom” years.
The reaction from Alberta obstetricians has been one of anger. Dr. Joseph Bugis, a prominent Edmonton obstetrician has denounced the accusation as “inaccurate” and “terrible,” although he admits that “delays do happen.” Dr. Bugis until recently performed abortions in an Edmonton hospital: he states that he has stopped doing them, as has his colleague, Dr. James S. Barr, because so many patients were using the procedure as a form of birth control.
Another Edmonton obstetrician, Dr. John Boyd has been involved in a malpractice suite. A three-year-old has been awarded $155,058 by a Court of Queen’s Bench Justice. The child was born seemingly dead but was revived and is now quadriplegic and spastic. Justice J.M. Hope ruled that omissions in care lead him to the conclusion that they amounted to a breach of duty, constituting negligence, which was the cause of the damage or materially increased the risk of injury to the child. “There was more than an error in judgment,” he said.
John Martland, Dr. Boyd’s lawyer, claimed that the care given met Alberta standards, a view echoed by obstetricians called as defence witnesses. Judge Hope said that although Dr. Boyd had helped to set up the high risk obstetrical programme at the University of Alberta Hospital he had failed to make use of the available methods to diagnose the welfare of the fetus, and failed to realize that the mother, described as a dwarf with a heart murmur and renal rickets, required more care than an ordinary patient. He also failed to follow the pregnancy continuously in order to become aware of early danger signals, according to the judge. The baby was born with the umbilical cord looped around its neck.
Dr. Boyd also performs abortions.
