Improving safety in maternity services
The King’s Fund launched an independent inquiry into the safety of maternity services in 2006. The report from that inquiry, Safe Births: Everybody's business, made a series of recommendations about how the safety of maternity care could be improved.
Building on the recommendations from our inquiry and in partnership with the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Royal College of Midwives, the NHS Litigation Authority, Centre for Maternal And Child Enquiries and the National Patient Safety Agency, The King’s Fund launched the Safer Births Improvement Programme, providing customised support to 12 multidisciplinary maternity teams in England. This toolkit shares the experiences and lessons from those teams.
Improving Safety in Maternity Services: a toolkit for teams is organised around five key areas for improvement in maternity care on which the teams focused (you can download the individual sections on the right):
- teamworking
- communication
- training
- information and guidance
- staffing and leadership
Each section begins with a brief explanation on how focusing on improvements in each area can contribute to improved safety. It then highlights some of the experiences of the maternity teams who focused on this issue and their key learning points. There are also short summaries of tools that can be used to improve safety. These provide a brief guide to how to use the tool and signpost further resources. Where available we have included examples or templates that can be used or adapted for local use. Finally, we provide more information about service improvement and the tools and techniques that can be used.
The challenges facing maternity teams are likely to increase with the financial pressures on the NHS. However, many of the changes described here do not need additional funding. They need time and commitment, leadership and some knowledge. The tips and tools in this resource will help maternity teams to implement changes that will deliver benefits to women and families.
More on improving safety in maternity services
- See how three maternity teams have improved the safety of their services in our case study videos
- Catch up with the highlights of our conference: Delivering better maternity care
- Read Vi's blog: The push for improvement in maternity care
Comments
Maternal care improvement tools are very important to apply in health care settings in the resource poor countries.
Out of interest for those involved in maternity patient safety, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists will be holding Maternity Patient Safety Day on 15 February 2013. More details at rcog.org.uk/events/maternity-patient-safety-day
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