{"id":13330,"date":"2026-05-08T14:29:38","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T04:29:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/uncategorized\/obstetric-medicine"},"modified":"2026-05-08T14:29:38","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T04:29:38","slug":"obstetric-medicine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/news\/obstetric-medicine","title":{"rendered":"What is obstetric medicine and why is it important?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What is obstetric medicine and why is it important?<\/h1>\n
\"RBWH

RBWH Obstetric Physician Professor Leonie Callaway, Obstetric Medicine Clinical Director Dr Helen Barrett and Clinical Director Obstetric Medicine Dr Karin Lust<\/p><\/div>\n

You\u2019ve probably heard of obstetricians and midwives and know about their role in caring for pregnant people and babies, but for some pregnant people, obstetric medicine specialists may also be involved in a patient\u2019s multidisciplinary healthcare team.<\/h4>\n

Obstetric medicine physicians care for patients with maternal medical problems in pregnancy, for example a person who has long term health problems before pregnancy or develops health problems in pregnancy.<\/p>\n

At Royal Brisbane and Women\u2019s Hospital (RBWH) the team consists of physicians trained in internal medicine like general physicians, kidney specialists, endocrinologists, rheumatologists and haematologists, who then complete additional training in obstetric medicine to understanding how health conditions change in pregnancy and how to manage these conditions to reduce risks.<\/p>\n

A large portion of women seen by the obstetric medicine team have conditions like preeclampsia, gestational diabetes and severe morning sickness, as well as women with preexisting medical disorders or those who have developed medical disorders in previous pregnancies for preconception planning.<\/p>\n

RBWH Obstetric Medicine Clinical Director Dr Helen Barrett said her team works alongside other maternity carers such as midwives, GPs, pharmacists and obstetricians to reduce the risks and get everyone safely through the pregnancy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that in Queensland, many women have medical health problems in pregnancy, and here at RBWH, we see a larger proportion of those birthing here because we are one of the central referral centres for the state and run clinics such as our High-risk Pregnancy Cardiology Clinic,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe need for our services is increasing for a number of reasons, including that healthcare for many childhood conditions has improved, so people as they grow up are more able to consider a pregnancy, as well as the increasing availability of IVF which helps those older who might have developed health conditions as an adult enter pregnancy.<\/p>\n

\u201cOften people find it confusing about whether we are obstetricians or not because our title is similar, but once they meet us as part of their multidisciplinary team, they can see where we fit and how well those teams work together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr Barrett said there are a few common misconceptions her team sees.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe main thing we see is that people can sometimes assume all medications are \u2018bad\u2019 in pregnancy, but when we look at the risk\/benefit, there is often more benefit to having a condition well controlled using medications than having an uncontrolled or poorly controlled medical condition. It\u2019s always important to discuss medication use in pregnancy with your treating team,\u201d she said<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the context of having a pre-existing health condition in pregnancy, managing risk is about seeing both sides of the equation. What is the risk to the pregnancy of not treating or managing the condition well and what is the risk of the medication? We often find that the balance of risk sits toward having excellent management of the condition prior to or during pregnancy and so reducing risks in the pregnancy.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur aim is to work with the patient and their usual maternity carer to understand their management options and to make a plan that reduces risks for them and their baby during the pregnancy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is really important for patients who are at risk of pregnancy complications and have a pre-existing health condition to talk with their treating clinicians about contraception and about planning a pregnancy to see what you might need to plan or change before they conceive, or to discuss contraception options if you are not wanting to have a baby at present.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You probably know what an obstetrician does, but do you know the role of an obstetric medicine specialist?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":13331,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_searchwp_excluded":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1476,1596],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-rbwh","category-metro-north-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13330"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13332,"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13330\/revisions\/13332"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}