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Original article
Improving communication between obstetric and neonatology teams for high-risk deliveries: a quality improvement project
  1. Nathan C Sundgren1,2,
  2. Frances C Kelly3,
  3. Emily M Weber4,
  4. Merle L Moore4,
  5. Ganga Gokulakrishnan1,2,
  6. Joseph L Hagan5,
  7. M Colleen Brand1,
  8. Jennifer O Gallegos1,
  9. Barbara E Levy4,
  10. Regine M Fortunov1,2
  1. 1Department of Neonatology, Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston, Texas, USA
  2. 2Department of Pediatrics, Section of Neonatology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA
  3. 3Department of Quality and Patient Safety, Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston, Texas, USA
  4. 4Department of Nursing, Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston, Texas, USA
  5. 5Center for Research and Evidence-Based Practice, Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston, Texas, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Nathan C Sundgren; ncsundgr{at}texaschildrens.org

Abstract

Summoning is a key component of communication between obstetrics and neonatal resuscitation team (NRT) in advance of deliveries. A paging system is a commonly used summoning tool. The timeliness and information contained in the page help NRT to optimally prepare for postdelivery infant care. Our aim was to increase the frequency that summoning pages contained gestational age and reason for NRT attendance to >90%. At baseline, 8% of pages contained gestational age and 33% of pages contained a reason for NRT attendance. Sequential Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles were used as our model for quality improvement. During the 8-month improvement period, the per cent of pages increased to 97% for gestational age and 97% for reason for NRT attendance. Measures of page timeliness, our balancing measure, did not change. Summoning communication between obstetric and NRT is crucial for optimal perinatal outcomes. The active involvement of all stakeholders throughout the project resulted in the development of a standardised paging tool and a more informative paging process, which is a key communication tool used in many centres.

  • communication
  • paging
  • neonatal
  • obstetrics

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjoq-2017-000095

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors NCS conceptualised and designed the study, collected data, carried out the initial analyses, drafted the initial manuscript, and reviewed and revised the manuscript. FCK carried out additional analyses, helped draft the initial manuscript, and reviewed and revised the manuscript. EMW, MLM, MCB, JOG and BEL defined the PDSA cycles and were integral to implementation of interventions and collection of the data. JLH helped design the data collection database, made all the statistical analyses of the data and helped draft the manuscript. GG and RMF critically reviewed and revised the manuscript. All authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript as submitted and agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data sharing statement No additional data are available.