Abstract
The relations between perinatal outcomes and physician specialty were examined in a retrospective study. Data pertaining to demographics, labor and delivery events, and maternal and neonatal outcomes were examined for 125 family medicine and 125 obstetric patients. Bivariate analyses showed no differences between the groups for demographics. Significant differences were found for two of 13 labor and delivery events: episiotomy and degree of lacerations. However, when multivariate analyses were conducted to control for possibie confounding effects, differences between the groups for episiotomy or degree of lacerations were no longer significant. The only significant difference between the groups on perinatal outcomes was that family medicine newborns had a significantly higher mean birth weight (3364.9 grams) than obstetric newborns (3147.1 grams). Stepwise multiple regression analysis showed that smoking and specialty account for approximately 10 percent of the variance in birth weight. Overall, the results suggest that, regardless of physician specialty, obstetric and family medicine patients had similar outcomes.
