Introduction of an obstetric-specific medical emergency team for obstetric crises: implementation and experience

Obstetric care in low-resource settings: What, who, and how to overcome challenges to scale up?

“…Teams in tertiary facilities in high-resource settings in the United States have used rapid response teams, who can be summoned with a single call to the hospital operator, to implement clinical protocols for early diagnosis and rapid treatment for timesensitive complications such as emergency cesarean delivery and hemorrhage, including preparedness for surgical intervention in highrisk patients. These teams have led to positive impacts on maternal mortality [243], and in one study, recognition of obstetric emergencies and use of the rapid response team increased 4-fold [244]. In low-resource settings where delays are even more common, formation of such teams may lead to reductions in adverse mortality and non-fatal outcomes, but may be challenging from a human resource perspective.…”

Obstetric medical emergency teams are a step forward in maternal safety!

“…Only three papers were suitable for inclusion in the review. [181921] The summary of the three identified articles is presented in Table 1.…”

“…[21] documented the implementation of an obstetrics rapid response team, called O. They identified the needs to implement such a team, implementation challenges, and possible obstructions.…”

“…[21] Furthermore, 28% of all direct maternal deaths are directly attributable to hemorrhage, with massive obstetric hemorrhage being a major risk factor for severe maternal morbidity and mortality. [171922] Region of birth,[23] skilled birth attendant at delivery, and health expenditure are found to be key variables that predict maternal mortality at the national level.…”

Postpartum Hemorrhage on Labor and Delivery

“…For example, group paging systems can simultaneously request an entire Obstetric Medical Emergency Team including an attending obstetrician, critical care physician, anesthesiologist, respiratory therapist, and several nurses. 53 Likewise, an obstetric hemorrhage cart (Supplemental Digital Content 3, http://links.lww.com/ASA/A132) can be used to store essential equipment, including a laminated copy of the institution's hemorrhage protocol, important phone numbers, equipment for lines, fluid resuscitation and serial labs, and surgical equipment including a hysterectomy tray. 54 Finally, an obstetric hemorrhage drug pack containing fentanyl, oxytocin, methergine, misoprostol, and hemabate allows for efficient retrieval in the event of an emergency (M. A. Vallejo, Jr., written communication, May 2011).…”