Evidence-based practices such as the Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health’s Patient Safety Bundles, focused on Obstetric Hemorrhage, are key to improving maternal health outcomes. As part of the LaPQC Safe Births Initiative, North Caddo Medical Center saw impressive results from their improvement work during a recent obstetric event.

Malana Jester, Nurse Manager of Labor and Delivery at North Caddo, shared how their team used reliable clinical processes to respond effectively to a postpartum hemorrhage.

“Yesterday we delivered a patient who had a history of postpartum hemorrhage. We were prepared first, by carrying out our admission risk assessment and then prepared for delivery with our newly adopted “Bleed Box” and obstetric hemorrhage policy and checklist. And as we expected, she began to bleed about 45 minutes after delivery. We called the patient’s obstetrician who immediately returned. We followed the hemorrhage policy and checklist, demonstrating our readiness and response perfectly. We used our medications in our “Bleed Box,” that were already at the bedside as a response intervention to the patient’s admission risk assessment. The obstetrician was confident and pleased with the process, everyone was calm and we didn’t have to run everywhere looking for medications or supplies, as the checklist  directed our actions. My staff were all assigned to their roles, and it went great! We even weighed all the blood soaked items, carrying out the best practice of quantitative blood loss. It was a learning opportunity for us and it worked like a charm, giving our patient the best outcome possible. Our team is excited and proud of our quality improvement work, and wanted to share, since the LaPQC played a large part of our success in the testing and implementation of our hemorrhage response policy and procedure.”

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