Complaints Template
Have your voice and feedback heard
Do you have an experience, feedback or complaint about the maternity services you've received and you're unsure where to start?
Alternatively, receive an automatically generated complaint in your inbox by leaving a review at Best Birth Finder.
How to step-by-step
1. Request a copy of your medical records. To do this, Google your hospital name + 'copy of medical records'
​
2. Find your hospital in the table below and copy and paste all email addresses in that row as well as complaints@maternitychoices.org.au.
​
3. Using the email template on the right as a guide, copy and paste and edit to fit your experience.
4. Set a calendar alert to check you've received a written response in 30 days as you may need to chase up a written response.
5. After 45 days has lapsed since you sent your complaint, you can forward your complaint and their response (or lack thereof) to the Human Rights Commission HERE.
​
6. Email the hospital's response HERE and let us know if you've lodged it to the Human Rights Commission.
​
7. If accepted by the Human Rights Commission, this will start the mediation process.
Example template
What happened?
Here are some examples:
​
(They did to me...)
-I consented to a vaginal exam but was given a stretch and sweep without consent
-I was told I wasn't allowed access to water birth as pain relief and coerced into epidural
-I was forced into my back and it hurt and caused me to tear
-I was touched without consent
-I was coerced into induction/c-section with the dead baby card
-I wasn't given full free and informed consent abut the risks of induction/c-section
-I didn't give full free and informed consent for GTT and was unaware of the risks and consequences of having this test.
-I was yelled at for eating/vomiting
-My clitoral tissue was severed with reduced sexual function without full free and informed consent
-I was given a husband stitch which is female genital mutilation without full free and informed consent
-I was coerced into an anal exam despite no clinical indication or evidence for this degrading practice
-I was given a synto injection without full free and informed consent ie not told the risks to me and my baby.
-My babies cord was cut early for no reason causing harm and resuscitation didn't occur on me which is most optimal
-My placenta was disposed of without full free and informed consent with devastating impacts on its cultural significance
​
(No access to...)
-I didn't get into MGP
-I didn't get into Birth Center
-I didn't get to birth close to home
-I didn't get access to waterbirth
-I didn't get access to a vaginal breech birth clinic
-My private midwife, photographer or doula wasn't allowed to support me even though I had paid them
-Support people of choice given the cultural significance to me.
-Birthing on Country Services
-In home postnatal support
​
How did it make you feel?
Here are some examples:
-inhuman, lack of choice, coerced, offended, not valued, degraded, treated like a child with no autonomy, risking my baby and my morbidity, fear, scared, unsupported, risk of poor outcomes associated with hospital birth, not listened to, anxious about strangers,
Qld Human Rights Act 2019 violations
Choose which section/s of the act was breeched:
-section 15.4 equity before the law as a low income family unable to afford private care to facilitate all places of birth
- section 17.b cruel inhumane and degrading treatment
-section 17.c coercion without full free and informed consent
-section 27 cultural rights
-section 28 cultural rights - Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islander
-section 37.1 access to health services without discrimination ie men can access evidence based medical care and
-section 37.2 access to health services in an emergency if hospital name forces me to birth alone without any medical support
Remedy
What do you want the service to respond with?
- Apology for not providing it
- Apology for not providing info on accessing best practice models of care and place of birth
- Apology for not providing information on how to complain and remedy at time of appointment to ensure full, free and informed consent
-Facility upgrade and Clinician upskilling in clinical practice
- Maternity Choices Australia training on Queensland Human Rights Act 2019 in maternity
- Queensland Human Rights Commission training CLICK FOR COURSE LINK
- Hospital and Health Service to write to Director General of Queensland Health asking for Publicly Funded Homebirth insurance to be added to insurance certificate, greater access to birth centres & continuity targets
- Infographics publicly available on social media showing maternity outcomes and experience measures (such as percentage of consumers offered MGP at time of birth, water birth, c-section, perineal trauma including episiotomy and 3/4 degree tear rate)
-This service paying for private care if unable to meet consumers needs.