Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Doctor's 2007 Interview Balanced and Measured

I hadn't heard this interview with Jeffrey Ecker MD before, though I had read the accompanying paper in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

What stands out for me in particular is his support of maternal request, and also his response to being asked whether he's concerned about rising caesarean rates; he says:

"I guess I'm more interested than concerned.

"I think a lot of this is decisions that patients and doctors make together, and when you make decisions about risks there's no one right answer, and really I think what's changed is that we've reset our threshold for what acceptable risk is."

You can listen to the full (7 minute) interview here, in which Jeffrey Ecker (an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and an obstetrician at Massachusetts General Hospital) talks to Rachel Gotbaum (an independent producer based in Boston) about the contributors to the increase in cesarean deliveries.

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