Film to Focus on Doctors and Midwives

Virginia, USA: A new documentary called ‘The Hospital Midwife’ is set to be filmed at the Physician and Midwife Collaborative Practice in Northern Virginia. Taking place over the next eighteen months, filmmakers will look at how physicians and midwives there are working together in collaborative care – a model that’s gaining notoriety across the country.

“We want to explore and illuminate another side of the profession – one that is rarely seen on film,” said Kari Barber, producer of the film. “The word ‘midwife’ may bring to mind home births and bathtubs for some, but our documentary will hopefully change this.”

Kari Barber will be joined by documentary film director Brigid Maher (Veiled Voices 2009) and cinematographer Isabelle Carbonell. Together they will launch into an exploration of the inner workings of physician-midwife collaborative care.

“Collaborative care is something that deserves to be brought before a wider audience,” Kari Barber added. “The idea is that several people working in different parts of the healthcare system are brought together to combine their skills and abilities. This is better for the patient and ideally will result in a better outcome than would be achieved by seeing different healthcare providers in different settings. The Physician and Midwife Collaborative Practice is an excellent example of this and it’s why we’ve chosen this practice as the base for our filming.”

The documentary will seek to discover how doctors and midwives navigate this shared terrain to serve patients more efficiently. The film will follow the lives of several patients through the course of their pregnancies. This will allow the viewing audience to discover how the practice works and how the collaborative care model makes for a better degree of service and care for pregnant women.

“We’d be interested to hear from patients who are with Physicians and Midwives at the moment who may like to be part of the documentary,” Kari continued. “We’d be delighted to tell them more about what we have in mind, so they can decide whether or not they’d like to be part of the process. This is a golden opportunity to bring the idea of collaborative care to a wider audience, as part of ‘The Hospital Midwife’. We very much look forward to meeting some of the patients who express an interest in appearing in the documentary in the near future.”

For more information on the documentary, contact Kari Barber on (202) 487 4239 or send an email to [email protected].

About Physicians and Midwives

If you are currently a patient of Physicians and Midwives and are interested in learning more about the possibility of participating in the film, contact Kari Barber at [email protected]. Alternatively call Kari on (202) 487 4239. Members of the media interested in a story about the film should email [email protected].