Avoiding Brain Injury in Childbirth: new approaches to improve outcomes

The Avoiding Brain Injury in Childbirth (ABC) programme aims to support maternity services to improve clinical practice by providing national clinical protocols, tools backed by multi-professional training, and a safety culture toolkit to address two significant contributors to avoidable brain injury in childbirth:

• detection and response to possible fetal deterioration during labour
• management of the obstetric emergency of impacted fetal head at caesarean section

ABC is combining clinical expertise, lived experiences, and the best possible scientific evidence to co-design a national programme that will improve outcomes and have a lasting change. The programme has drawn on the expertise of maternity staff, social scientists, engineers, human factors experts, information scientists and evaluators – as well as the views of women and birth partners. The standardised, evidence-based approaches will help address unwarranted variation in outcomes while supporting clinical judgement. The ABC approaches have undergone extensive user testing and piloting in a variety of maternity settings.

ABC is led by a collaboration of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Royal College of Midwives and THIS Institute. ABC is working with and mobilising the strengths of existing approaches and initiatives in NHS maternity services, ensuring alignment and coherence.

Join this webinar to understand the evidence for improvement, the ABC approaches and influence thinking on implementation.

Why attend?

• Opportunity to hear from the Department of Health and Social Care about why they chose to invest in the programme and how it will support trusts to respond to the Ockenden report actions.
• Understand the evidence on the need for a more holistic approach to detection and response to intrapartum fetal surveillance and improved management of impacted fetal head at caesarean section.
• Learn about the proposed national clinical protocols and tools and multi-professional training packages.
• Hear about how an ABC safety culture toolkit will support good practice in relation to the two clinical situations.
• Learn about ‘what good looks like’ for women and families in communication and informed decision-making around the two clinical situations.
• Hear feedback from those who responded to surveys and took part in piloting.