The British association of perinatal medicine (BAPM)

Abstract

At the end of the 1980s as the British Paediatric Association was working to emerge as a separate entity outside the umbrella of the Royal College of Physicians, the British Association of Perinatal Medicine was continuing the work of trying to establish specialist perinatal care. Throughout that decade the differentiation of obstetric units and neonatal units into those offering complex care and those that offered a less specialist service to a local population had made little progress or indeed no progress in some parts of the UK. At that stage neither the BPA nor the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (RCOG) fully recognised the need to establish a coordinated specialist neonatology and high-risk obstetric service across the country. However it was at the end of the 1980s, as therapeutic options began to grow, that there was a growing recognition of a role for specialist neonatology and neonatal centres, even though the vast majority of specialist neonatal care was delivered by consultants who had both paediatric and neonatal patients and who worked outside the specialist neonatal centres. It is probably fair to say it was large outside influences which drove a major change in this situation.