Maternity professionals are doing more to ensure safe care is delivered reliably to mothers and babies, but there are still significant barriers impeding their progress, according to a new report published by The King’s Fund.
The report is based on the outcome of a series of regional events held with midwives, obstetricians and risk managers as part of the “Safer Births” initiative, which explored their views on the challenges facing maternity units in improving safety. Many of the teams reported major barriers that were preventing their progress, including: • A lack of staff – this was of greatest concern to most teams, particularly with a rising birth rate. • Recruiting and retaining staff, especially midwives with more than a couple of years’ experience. • Poor communication between staff from different disciplines or different units particularly during transfer. • A lack of leadership, both within maternity units and at board level of NHS Trusts. Local examples of innovative best practice were highlighted, such as joint training of teams from two different Trusts between which transfers are made. Other solutions identified by the teams included: • New ways of deploying staff, such as case loading or flexible rostering across the labour ward and community teams. • Developing support roles to take on new responsibilities. • Aligning shift patterns so that midwives and obstetricians attend the same, multidisciplinary handover. • Joint training to improve team-working and clinical outcomes – this was seen as crucial and a number of Trusts had revamped their skills and drills training to make sure everyone knew what to do in an emergency. • Supporting clinical staff to put guidelines into practice. Dr Anna Dixon, director of policy at The King’s Fund, said: “This report shows that maternity professionals are introducing new ways of working that should improve the safety of care provided to mothers and babies. We are seeing progress and an appetite locally for change – there are many examples of local innovation where solutions focus on making the best use of existing resources to deliver safe care. “Yet front line staff who took part in our events also identified obstacles. They want to be able to exchange ideas and good practice with other Trusts and need practical advice on how to improve safety, tailored to their local circumstances, not simply more guidance.” The events marked the first stage of the Safer Births initiative – a service improvement programme set up by The King’s Fund and national and local NHS partners to help front line professionals improve the safety of maternity services.
