The Safety Ledger: Why Labor & Delivery Needs Its Own Emergency Room

Pregnant women still get sent from one ER to another, sometimes with fatal delays. It’s time to treat L&D as what it already is: a 24/7 emergency department for two patients at once.

It was 2 a.m. during a blizzard, and I was the ObGyn resident covering the general ER. The snow outside was two feet deep; the waiting room was worse. A 12-week-pregnant woman walked in, shivering, clutching her coat.
“I want a Pap smear,” she said.
I explained, gently, that this was an emergency room, not a clinic. She sighed. “I know. But the clinic’s o…