In brief
- While the overwhelming majority of births in England are safe, the lack of a systematic approach to ensuring safety across maternity services is creating unnecessary risks.
- There is evidence of local activity to improve safety in maternity services, but it is often small scale and fragmented. The challenge facing maternity units is to make systemic changes in care that are sustainable to ensure that safe care is reliably delivered.
- In 2008 the report of the independent inquiry commissioned by The King’s Fund, Safe Births: Everybody's business, and the Healthcare Commission’s review of maternity services, Towards Better Births, identified similar areas in need of improvement, including staffing, training and communication. Together with a number of other reports, guidance documents and reviews over the past few years, they identified the challenges for maternity services and set out recommendations.
- The Safer Births programme follows on from these developments as a service improvement programme that aims to improve the safety of maternity services in England. The goal of the programme is to enable frontline professionals working in maternity units to improve the safety of their services that they deliver to women and their babies.
- The Safer Births initiative is a partnership between The King’s Fund, Royal College of Midwives, Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Centre for Maternal and Child Enquiries, NHS Litigation Authority and the National Patient Safety Agency.
- It is vital that there is a co-ordinated approach to service improvement, which is why the Safer Births programme seeks to bring together national and local NHS organisations who share a common interest in improving the safety of maternity services.
- We are working intensively with 12 maternity teams as part of an improvement network launched in September 2009. The aim of the network is to improve the outcomes of care during labour and birth for mothers and babies.
- The main focus of the improvement network is in the areas of teamworking and communication, staffing and training, leadership, and the use of guidance and information. Participating units have identified a focus for their improvement activity and are piloting and implementing safety tools and approaches. They will be evaluating their impact and sharing learning with other trusts.
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