Supporting maternity services to improve clinical practices.
Delivering and facilitating workshops
The Avoiding Brain Injury in Childbirth (ABC) programme aimed to support maternity services to improve clinical practice of two significant contributors to avoidable brain injury in childbirth: • Detection and response to suspected intrapartum fetal deterioration • Management of the obstetric emergency of impacted fetal head at caesarean section
For THIS Institute’s project, The Motherhood Group was involved in delivering and facilitating engagement workshops, observations and advice based on Black mothers experiences, reading and commenting on study design, recruitment and inclusion plans and other documents related to the Project.
Asking the difficult questions
We asked mothers in our workshops the following questions:
Learning from your experiences for improvement
How many times have you been in labour? Given birth?
The baby’s heart rate is usually monitored during the labour either by the midwife listening in with a special instrument that is placed on the woman’s tummy, or electronically, by a machine. Have you experienced either of these?
Thinking about how staff communicated with you during your labour about monitoring of the baby?
What did they do well in terms of communication about monitoring?
What could have been better in terms of communication about monitoring?
How did the communication make you feel?
Reflecting on your experiences of monitoring during labour is there anything you would like maternity staff to know which you feel may improve experiences for other women and/or birth partners?
Hearing their views
We would like to share with you and hear your views on some communication materials that we developed. We based them on consultations that we had last year with women and birth partners who had experience of fetal monitoring during labour. These materials are intended for the clinicians to support communication between them and the women who have fetal monitoring during labour. Would you do/say differently?
