Safety standards
This is a comprehensive summary of the management of chicken pox for pregnant women and babies. It includes an executive summary which highlights recommendations for service provision.
Inquiries and reports
The report looks at a number of indicators of the pressures on maternity care and the resources available to cope in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Inquiries and reports
This report investigated maternity services at Furness General Hospital from January 2004 to June 2013, and concludes the maternity unit was dysfunctional and that serious failures of clinical care led to unnecessary deaths of mothers and babies. It makes a series of recommendations for the wider NHS as well as Morecambe Bay.
Safety standards
This table can be used to define and interpret cardiotocograph traces and to guide the management of the labour for women who are having continuous cardiotocography.
Video
The changing demographics of the maternity population have driven complexity and risk in maternity care. In this video, Dr Daghni Rajasingam, Head of Service and Consultant Obstetrician, and Geraldine Joyce, Safeguarding Lead and Midwife at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, discuss the challenges that supporting vulnerable patients can present to maternity services.
Discussion papers
Recurrent reports have called for improvement in the way in which obstetric teams work together. The cultural and organisational working practices that differ between these groups can make handover and teamworking a challenge. Dr Edward Prosser-Snelling's article examines the nature of teams and handover in obstetrics and provides some suggested areas for improvement.
Discussion papers
Midwifery 2020 has set out to develop an informed vision of the contribution midwives will make to achieving quality, cost-effective maternity services for women, babies and families across the United Kingdom.
Inquiries and reports
This Confidential Enquiry identified substandard care in 70% of Direct deaths and 55% of Indirect deaths. Many of the identified avoidable factors remain the same as those identified in previous enquiries. Recommendations for improving care have been developed and are highlighted in this report.
Academic papers
The WHO developed the Pilot Edition of the Safe Childbirth Checklist to support the delivery of essential maternal and perinatal care practices. The Checklist contains 29 items addressing the major causes of maternal death in low-income countries. It was developed following a rigorous methodology and tested for usability in ten countries across Africa and Asia.
Other tools and resources
The aim of the King’s Fund study was to obtain the views of women with recent birth experiences about the safety of the maternity care they received, to inform the King’s Fund inquiry into the safety of maternity services in England.
