Audrey Lyndon

Abstract

The overarching goal of postpartum care is to provide a safe, family-centered environment where women and providers engage in shared decision making to select treatment plans that promote physiologic and emotional adaption and family bonding. The birth process and the fourth stage of labor are dynamic and present potential risk to mother and baby. Postpartum hemorrhage remains a leading cause of maternal mortality throughout the world. Manifesting as cardiac arrest or stroke, arterial thromboembolism accounts for approximately 20% of pregnancy-associated cases of thromboembolism. Postpartum hypertension (PPHTN) is a serious and potentially underappreciated problem that may persist from pregnancy. Additional risk factors include infant characteristics such as difficult temperament, prematurity, or illness, and maternal factors such as unrealistic expectations of motherhood, low self-esteem and self-efficacy, previous depression, and a history of trauma, abuse, or perinatal loss.

Abstract

Effective, patient-centered communication facilitates interception and correction of potentially harmful conditions and errors. All team members, including women, their families, physicians, midwives, nurses, and support staff, have roles in identifying the potential for harm during labor and birth. However, the results of collaborative research studies conducted by organizations that represent professionals who care for women during labor and birth indicate that health care providers may frequently witness, but may not always report, problems with safety or clinical performance. Some of these health care providers felt resigned to the continuation of such problems and fearful of retribution if they tried to address them. Speaking up to address safety and quality concerns is a dynamic social process. Every team member must feel empowered to speak up about concerns without fear of put-downs, retribution, or receiving poor-quality care. Patient safety requires mutual accountability: individuals, teams, health care facilities, and professional associations have a shared responsibility for creating and sustaining environments of mutual respect and engaging in highly reliable perinatal care. Defects in human factors, communication, and leadership have been the leading contributors to sentinel events in perinatal care for more than a decade. Organizational commitment and executive leadership are essential to creating an environment that proactively supports safety and quality. The problem is well-known; the time for action is now.

Abstract

Effective, patient-centered communication facilitates interception and correction of potentially harmful conditions and errors. All team members, including women, their families, physicians, midwives, nurses, and support staff, have a role in identifying the potential for harm during labor and birth. However, the results of collaborative research studies conducted by organizations that represent professionals who care for women during labor and birth indicate that health care providers may frequently witness, but may not always report, problems with safety or clinical performance. Some of these health care providers felt resigned to the continuation of such problems and fearful of retribution if they tried to address them. Speaking up to address safety and quality concerns is a dynamic social process. Every team member must feel empowered to speak up about concerns without fear of put-downs, retribution, or receiving poor-quality care. Patient safety requires mutual accountability: individuals, teams, health care facilities, and professional associations have a shared responsibility for creating and sustaining environments of mutual respect and engaging in highly reliable perinatal care. Defects in human factors, communication, and leadership have been the leading contributors to sentinel events in perinatal care for more than a decade. Organizational commitment and executive leadership are essential to creating an environment that proactively supports safety and quality. The problem is well-known; the time for action is now.

Abstract

Objective: To explore clinician perspectives on whether they experience difficulty resolving patient-related concerns or observe problems with the performance or behavior of colleagues involved in intrapartum care. Design: Qualitative descriptive study of physician, nursing, and midwifery professional association members. Participants and Setting: Participants (N = 1932) were drawn from the membership lists of the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric, and Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN), American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), American College of Nurse Midwives (ACNM), and Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM). Methods: Email survey with multiple choice and free text responses. Descriptive statistics and inductive thematic analysis were used to characterize the data. Results: Forty-seven percent of participants reported experiencing situations in which patients were put at risk due to failure of team members to listen or respond to a concern. Thirty-seven percent reported unresolved concerns regarding another clinician's performance. The overarching theme was clinical disconnection, which included disconnections between clinicians about patient needs and plans of care and disconnections between clinicians and administration about the support required to provide safe and appropriate clinical care. Lack of responsiveness to concerns by colleagues and administration contributed to resignation and defeatism among participants who had experienced such situations. Conclusion: Despite encouraging progress in developing cultures of safety in individual centers and systems, significant work is needed to improve collaboration and reverse historic normalization of both systemic disrespect and overt disruptive behaviors in intrapartum care.

Abstract

Little is known about the nature of interprofessional collaboration on intensive care units (ICUs), despite its recognition as a key component of patient safety and quality improvement initiatives. This comparative ethnographic study addresses this gap in knowledge and explores the different factors that influence collaborative work in the ICU. It aims to develop an empirically grounded team diagnostic tool, and associated interventions to strengthen team-based care and patient family involvement. This iterative study is comprised of three phases: a scoping review, a multi-site ethnographic study in eight ICUs over 2 years; and the development of a diagnostic tool and associated interprofessional intervention-development. This study's multi-site design and the richness and breadth of its data maximize its potential to improve clinical outcomes through an enhanced understanding of interprofessional dynamics and how patient family members in ICU settings are best included in care processes. Our research dissemination strategy, as well as the diagnostic tool and associated educational interventions developed from this study will help transfer the study's findings to other settings.

Abstract

Background & objectives: Little is known about how parents think about neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) safety. Due to their physiologic immaturity and small size, infants in NICUs are especially vulnerable to injury from their medical care. Campaigns are underway to integrate patients and family members into patient safety. This study aimed to describe how parents of infants in the NICU conceptualise patient safety and what kinds of concerns they have about safety. Methods: This mixed-methods study employed questionnaires, interviews and observation with parents of infant patients in an academic medical centre NICU. Measures included parent stress, family-centredness and types of safety concerns. Results: 46 parents completed questionnaires and 14 of these parents also participated in 10 interviews (including 4 couple interviews). Infants had a range of medical and surgical problems, including prematurity, congenital diaphragmatic hernia and congenital cardiac disease. Parents were positive about their infants' care and had low levels of concern about the safety of procedures. Parents reporting more stress had more concerns. We identified three overlapping domains in parents' conceptualisations of safety in the NICU, including physical, developmental and emotional safety. Parents demonstrated sophisticated understanding of how environmental, treatment and personnel factors could potentially influence their infants' developmental and emotional health. Conclusions: Parents have safety concerns that cannot be addressed solely by reducing errors in the NICU. Parent engagement strategies that respect parents as partners in safety and address how clinical treatment articulates with physical, developmental and emotional safety domains may result in safety improvements.

Abstract

Objective: To contribute to the theoretical understanding of diagnosis peripartum cardiomyopathy (PPCM) and inform the clinician and patient education components of the Maternity Care Improvement Toolkit on Cardiovascular Disease in Pregnancy. Design: Qualitative descriptive study using publically available Internet narratives posted by women diagnosed with PPCM. Setting: Three online support groups for women diagnosed with PPCM. Sample: Unique narratives (N = 94). Methods: We conducted an online search using the terms PPCM and support. We found three websites that contained publicly accessible stories or biographies (narratives) posted by women diagnosed with PPCM, yielding narratives from 94 women. Narratives were downloaded and deidentified prior to analysis. Narratives were analyzed thematically according the methods of Braun and Clarke. Results: The primary themes included symptom experience, dismissal of symptoms by health care providers, including obstetric providers, cardiology providers, and emergency department providers, and a degree of fragmentation in care that endangered women in potentially life-threatening situations. Symptoms such as shortness of breath, fatigue or exhaustion, fluid retention, and excessive weight gain overlap with normal discomforts of pregnancy, creating space for clinicians to overlook the seriousness of their situation. This analysis highlights missed opportunities for timely, potentially lifesaving, diagnosis of PPCM; the importance of valuing women's knowledge of their bodies; the importance of positive interactions with maternity clinicians; and the critical role of ongoing social support throughout treatment and recovery. Conclusion/Implications for Nursing Practice: Cardiovascular disease, especially PPCM, is the leading cause of death among California women, based on the California Pregnancy-Associated Mortality Review, 2002 to 2004. Taking women seriously and valuing their knowledge as authoritative is critical to prompt accurate diagnosis. Women who receive this diagnosis, similar to other severe morbidities, are likely to experience posttraumatic stress disorder and require additional supportive care and resources as they adjust to postpartum life and recover from life-threatening illness.

Abstract

BACKGROUND: There is limited collaboration between hospitals and primary care despite parallel efforts to improve postdischarge care transitions. OBJECTIVE: To understand what primary care leaders perceived as barriers and facilitators to collaboration with hospitals. METHODS: Qualitative study with in-depth, semistructured interviews of 22 primary care leaders in 2012 from California safety-net clinics. RESULTS: Major barriers to collaboration included lack of institutional financial incentives for collaboration, competing priorities (e.g., regulatory requirements, strained clinic capacity, financial strain) and mismatched expectations about role and capacity of primary care to improve care transitions. Facilitators included relationship building through interpersonal networking and improving communication and information transfer via electronic health record (EHR) implementation. CONCLUSIONS: Efforts to improve care transitions should focus on aligning financial incentives, standardizing regulations around EHR interoperability and data sharing, and enhancing opportunities for interpersonal networking.

Abstract

We assessed the occurrence of 4 safety concerns among labor and delivery teams: dangerous shortcuts, missing competencies, disrespect, and performance problems. A total of 3282 participants completed surveys, and 92% of physicians (906 of 985), 93% of midwives (385 of 414), and 98% of nurses (1846 of 1884) observed at least 1 concern within the preceding year. A majority of respondents said these concerns undermined patient safety, harmed patients, or led them to seriously consider transferring or leaving their positions. Only 9% of physicians, 13% of midwives, and 13% of nurses shared their full concerns with the person involved. Organizational silence is evident within labor-and-delivery teams. Improvement will require multiple strategies, used at the personal, social, and structural levels.