I have about 12 family members that work in Medical/Nursing. There are a LOT of incompetent nurses out there. Lots giving wrong meds. Meds for one person to another, showing up to work drunk or high.

One tried to tell an expecting mother that she HAD to get an epidural. That is was Drs orders. When A, thry cant order it. B the Dr didnt actually order it. I call that incompetence.

There are some incompetent people in labor delivery. Basically if things are slightly or moderately out of normal spec then you have a much higher percentage chance of encountering or perhaps exposing their incompetence. If the mother in labor is inside of the normal curve, then you almost never see the incompetence because the job function requirements are the routine there.

It's like when you order the menu item it's easy to ring up. When you order the item with no pickles and a no mayo but mustard instead....then it gets dicey.

One example of outside of normal labor and delivery experience would include antepartum care for a significantly preterm pregnancy.

The nurses and or on call doctor (note it's a football game night) with a cracker jack degree or certification might ignore clear medical signs that the woman is laboring (including denying that the baby's heart rate is also reacting to the contractions), might refuse to check the cervical dilation for hours while the mother labors without any medical monitoring or support. All this is happening while the deride the mother for being unable to take a little discomfort and inquiring how might she fare when it's really labor.

When they finally get around to ordering and checking for dilation status, it might take an unusually long time for the examining nurse to call out 8~9 cm. Then they might all freak out and roll the mother's bed down the hallway to labor and delivery at a run. When they arrive at the L&D room, the dilation is suddenly full ( not 2 minutes later). Then they might try to play the game of don't push wait for the on call doctor to get there (the game is finally over so he's probably on his way) while they know the child is in the birth canal already. Oh and NICU is also left scrambling to have the equipment staged in the L&D room. Sure do hope NICU are fast because the child is going to need at least oxygen support at the preterm stage. The baby comes and thankfully the mother was blessed that an uninvolved but capable capable doctor was grabbed and thrown into the room to catch the baby and sew up the tearing (from a < 3lb baby delivery which never would have happened if the medical team had been involved with delivery before the very last moment) and NICU turned out to be fast at their jobs.

If this all sounds oddly specific, there's a reason for that.

Oh I had one! She wouldn’t let me empty my bladder because I said I felt like I had to poop at 6 inches dilated. In my subsequent pregnancy I had a midwife in hopes of a Vbac, she says that’s insane to not let a woman go to the bathroom when laboring. In fact a full bladder can block descent of the baby. I felt like a prisoner and had a pretty traumatic experience with all the interventions that led to a cesarean, hence why I went a completely different route with my next pregnancy.

I looked up the cost and it's about 14,000 in hospital costs to deliver a baby, so he doesn't really need to complain about the cost of health insurance as if he's not taking full advantage of it.