I picked up this article out of the Massachusetts area about two state troopers who delivered a baby alongside the highway. It just goes to point out this article’s pretty interesting. A woman was on her third baby, she knew she was in active labor. According to the article here, the troopers contacted emergency services when they found the woman on the side of the road and called for assistance and they were the first two on the scene and the baby was coming and so they had to step and do what needed to be done.

This just calls to mind that this is a group effort and sometimes we talk about the sometimes adversarial relationship we have with police in some jurisdictions and it’s unfortunate that that’s the case when it crops up but I think it’s important when we see articles like this to remind ourselves that we are all on the same team, that we’re really all out there to protect, to serve, to provide assistance and care and rescue when need to people. That is a very similar job responsibility for what we do as an overall description of what we do. Yes, police are involved with and their training is involved with taking care of more violent situations and that’s a good thing, they have the raining to do that, we have additional training to help us deal with certain extreme medical situations but certainly in the end of it, we are all about taking care of people and making our communities a better place whether that’s because we have helped deliver a new baby into our community or whether it’s because we had protected our community from a criminal situation, either way, this is a similar task.

So I want to say kudos to these two Massachusetts state troopers were the ones involved in the birth and kudos to them for stepping up and using their more limited medical training but certainly, training nonetheless and providing care until EMS could arrive. Just want to point this out, when you have something like this happen in your community, you should extend a congratulations and a thank you to members of other aspects of the emergency services system who provide a service that makes our jobs easier.

This could have been a lot worse if there was no one there to help this woman with this process and help her in case there was an issue with her baby after birth. Certainly child birth is a natural occurrence, I know the lot of my nurse-midwife friends would say that you don’t necessarily have to have someone right there, it can happen all on its own but certainly assistance is always appreciated in any of these types of situations and we all know how these things could go bad. So having qualified people with some level of training there to get things started is important and it makes our jobs easier ultimately when we have that kind of assistance riding alongside us or riding nearby that we can call on when needed.

Again, kudos to these two Massachusetts state for a job well done and next time you see something like this happen in your community, don’t forget to say congratulations and thanks.

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This article has been featured in the news segment of the MedicCast podcast episode Lisa Booze on Toxic Syndromes and Episode 229.