Maternity improvement plan: safe effective care

Our absolute priority is to provide you with safe and effective care.

We have

  • Reviewed all our guidelines to check that they follow current best practice and are up to date.
  • Completed the NHS England maternity safety tool.
  • Launched twice-daily multidisciplinary ward rounds.
  • Introduced a new triage assessment form and risk assessment tool.
  • Revised our antenatal guideline, which clearly sets out the responsibilities of our team at each appointment before delivery.
  • Changed our processes to make sure that, where a service user’s case needs to be discussed urgently with an obstetrician (escalation), this happens consistently in every instance.
  • Started using red hats for babies who need additional monitoring, so we can identify them easily.
  • Introduced standardised reporting commentary for ultrasounds to make it clear, consistent and easy to interpret.
  • Checked how consistently we record domestic violence assessments in clinical notes, and provided education to the team.
  • Introduced named consultant and midwifery leads for fetal monitoring (checking on the safety of an unborn baby).
  • Strengthened our equipment check process and the way in which we audit the process to check that it is working.
  • Updated our maternity dashboard, and shared it with the whole team to support ongoing improvement.
  • Reviewed our incident reporting process and how we share information about incidents and the learning from them with our team.

We will

  • Check our guidelines on managing complex cases to confirm that they are effective.
  • Develop a new fetal movement pathway, based on best practice.
  • Check that our new risk assessment tool is working as planned, and make any necessary changes.
  • Introduce a new standard operating procedure for how off-site and on-site team members should communicate most effectively.
  • Update our guidelines for counselling you about how and where you would like to give birth.
  • Update our guidelines to make sure that we always discuss nutrition with you at your antenatal appointments.
  • Launch a single point of access for any referral where there are concerns about a baby’s growth.
  • Continue to audit key safety issues such as record-keeping and infection control
  • Introduce a new Electronic Patient Record (EPR) which requires a team member to record a domestic violence assessment as a mandatory part of the record.

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