Just try harder, then it will work! An allegorical tale.
A tall tale about Chris and his attempts to make his daily commute safer. (But it’s actually about CTG monitoring….)
Archive for May 2024
Education isn’t the solution
When there’s a string of poor outcomes in a maternity service, and issues around fetal heart rate monitoring in labour are found to part of the problem, what invariably happens next is a recommendation for more and better education. It seems logical to believe that people who know more about the indications for CTG monitoring, how to interpret fetal heart rate patterns, and how and when to intervene in labour […]
High risk obstetrics and high risk women: a wee rant about language
“High risk” is a term that gets tossed around a lot in maternity services. Have you ever stopped to think about what is being hidden under the surface when it is used?
Do people agree on antenatal CTGs?
There has been a lot of research about whether health professionals agree on what to call the pattern on a CTG during labour. And the experts all agree, that the experts don’t agree. That is to say, there is a troubling degree of variability in how maternity professionals interpret the same CTG pattern. This is something I have written about before (here, here, and here). Until recently, I had never […]
Add central fetal monitoring and stir: Is this the solution to understaffing?
What happens when you introduce a central fetal monitoring system into a maternity service who are struggling to provide adequate staffing to maintain safety?
Birth Small Talk 