Saving Babies’ Lives in the South West
Stillbirth rates in the United Kingdom are among the highest within high income countries, with 4.7 per 1,000 total births in 2013. In addition to this, there is unwarranted variation in the stillbirth rate across the UK, with a significant number of stillbirths known to be avoidable. In November the government announced its intention to reduce the number of stillbirths in England by 50% by 2030. In 2014 the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists launched the Each Baby Counts quality improvement programme to reduce the number of intrapartum stillbirths by 50% by 2020.
NHS England has developed a Stillbirth Reduction Care Bundle, drawing together several key elements:
- Reducing smoking in pregnancy
- Identification and surveillance of pregnancies with fetal growth restriction
- Raising awareness amongst pregnant women of the importance of detecting and reporting reduced fetal movement (RFM), and ensuring providers have protocols in place, based on best available evidence, to manage care for women who report RFM
- Effective fetal monitoring during labour
The South West Maternity and Children’s Strategic Clinical Network is working with the West of England Academic Health Science Network and the South West Academic Health Science Network to run two events focussing on stillbirth reduction in the South West. The first was a Quality Improvement Masterclass held on Thursday 11th February 2016 at Taunton Rugby Club. The masterclass invited participating organisations to create a collaborative approach to plan the consistent implementation of key interventions from the care bundle. We invited the Clinical Director responsible for maternity services and the Head of Midwifery from each Acute Trust within the South West to attend the event, along with the GP Clinical Lead from each Clinical Commissioning Group.
The second event will be a larger regional engagement event which we plan to hold on Thursday 5th May 2016 at Taunton Racecourse. Details will be posted shortly.
[1] Stillbirth statistics - Tommy’s http://www.tommys.org/page.aspx?pid=388
Below are the presentations from the 11th February:
Ann Remmers_Stillbirth figures in the South West
Saving Babies Lives IP EFM 11.2.16
Making Stillbirth Count Presentation
Jason Gardosi, Director of the Perinatal Institute has provided the following link below, this website has various reference documents, a link to a lecture at the RCOG and onward links to other pages including ultrasound cost effectiveness and the SaBiNE project.
www.perinatal.org.uk/FetalGrowth/GAP/GAP.aspx
