Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania has been thinking about hiring laborists, said Thomas Bader, division chief of obstetrics and gynecology. But he is concerned about finding doctors who would be willing to narrow their responsibilities for the long term. "I'm not sure that, as a specialty, we're ready for it," he said.
He is now considering a hybrid system that would put some doctors in charge of all deliveries, but would also let them have broader duties during part of their workweek.
Einstein's Lee, who has three children and a physician husband, said she much preferred doing occasional laborist shifts to being on call seven or eight times a month. She and her husband used to take two cars to church. "You never know when you'll get called in," she said.
Now, she said, "when we're home, we're home. We don't get paged. For me, this has been wonderful."
As much as she likes the arrangement, she would not want to give up her office practice entirely. She likes to get to know patients.
With a resident's help, Lee did three Caesarean sections and presided over the births of five more babies, including a set of twins, on the day of Sabriah's birth.
Like Tucker, 20-year-old Adrienne Baione expected that Lee, a stranger to her, would deliver her son that day. That did not bother her. But that afternoon, just as Baione was getting serious about pushing, her regular obstetrician, Janet Ko, came to the labor floor. She had done a C-section and was finished operating for the day.
A relatively new doctor who is single and childless, Ko tried to deliver her own patients' babies last year. "I found I was here four days in a row without going home," she said. Now she is "stepping back," but still likes to do the deliveries when she can.
She jumped in to help Baione while Lee happily did some paperwork. Once the baby, John Aiden Ludwig, had arrived, Baione said she had been thrilled to hear Ko would be with her: "I said, 'Oh my God. Thank you. Somebody I actually know.' "
View a photo slide show of obstetricians working on the maternity ward at Albert Einstein Medical Center at http://go.philly. com/laborist
