George F. Winter
Freelance writer; Fellow of the Institute of Biomedical Science
Compassion and kindness
Significant among the dispiriting catalogue of midwifery and obstetric issues that were identified in the review of 250 maternity services cases at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust, is...
COVID-19 and caesareans
In their recent systematic review of SARS-CoV-2 in pregnancy, Akhtar et al (2020) considered 22 studies, which identified 156 pregnant women with SARS-CoV-2 and 108 neonatal outcomes. The most common...
How far does duty of care extend?
The impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on global health continues apace, generating widespread apprehension among the public and healthcare workers
Viability of newborns
Should we have on-call philosophers in midwifery? Philippa Foot (1920–2010) suggested that just as we summon a plumber to fix a leaking tap, a ‘jobbing philosopher’ could be called when ethical issues...
COVID-19: what are the physical and mental challenges?
The global emergence of COVID-19 a matter of months ago means that while its relatively thin evidence base expands, the need to interpret new findings with caution implies that the science of this...
Gestational diabetes and ethics
According to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) around 700 000 women give birth in England and Wales annually; up to 5% of these women have either pre-existing diabetes or...
Pulse oximetry screening
Critical congenital heart defects (CCHDs) affect around 2 in 1 000 newborns, and babies with CCHD often have low blood oxygen concentrations, which can be measured by non-invasive pulse oximetry (PO)...
Non-invasive prenatal testing and decision-making
The phrase ‘tyranny of choice’ has been widely used in recent years to illustrate the increasing range of options that are available to consumers in the developed world But Suter (2018) uses the term...
Dealing with burnout
In their study of physician stress, Hannan et al (2018) note that in 1974, the American psychologist Herbert Freudenberger first coined the term ‘burnout’, defining it as ‘a state of mental and...
Breast milk donation and bereavement
Choosing to donate breast milk can be a coping mechanism for grieving mothers
Vitamin K and ethics
With the Andrew Wakefield MMR and autism scandal, and the subsequent rise of the anti-vaccination movement, today's patients can now be seen as sceptical consumers keen to assert their autonomy, and...
Migrants and pregnancy
In 2017 there was a global population of 244 million international migrants, including 22 million refugees With the inevitable implications for healthcare as a result of mass population movements,...
Smoking and pregnancy
The adverse effects of smoking in pregnancy include miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, stillbirth and birth defects (Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, 2015) According to NHS Digital...
Vaccines, pregnancy and ethics
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the drug thalidomide was taken by pregnant women to counteract morning sickness —with the result that around 10 000 babies globally were born with limb deformities
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