The Perinatal Birth Environment: Communication Strategies and Processes for Adherence to a Standardized Guideline in Women Undergoing Second-Stage Labor With Epidural Anesthesia

A Quality Improvement Project Utilizing a Clinical Practice Guideline in Women During Second-Stage Labor

Second-stage labor is the most challenging stage of labor, as it requires increasing exertion of the birthing woman. Variances in nursing interventions in second-stage labor have an influence on outcomes. There is disparity in nursing care during second-stage labor. The purpose of this project was to evaluate a clinical practice guideline in second-stage labor with respect to positioning, timing of pushing, type of pushing effort, and the effect on birth method and perineal trauma. Spontaneous vaginal birth increased, vacuum extraction birth decreased, and vaginal birth after cesarean doubled. The rate of episiotomy decreased, the rate of multiple types of lacerations decreased, the rate of vaginal wall tears decreased, and the need for wound suturing of birth acquired lacerations decreased.

How to Engage Your Team to Implement Delayed Cord Clamping

This article describes how a health care team changed practice by implementing delayed cord clamping as standard practice. After administration of a survey to assess clinicians' knowledge and to discover barriers to this proposed practice change, members of a multidisciplinary committee used the results to create a guideline for delayed cord clamping and a plan for successful implementation. Integral to embedding and sustaining changes in practice was development of the Delivery Room Brief and Debrief Tool and inclusion of the process into nursing guidelines and the electronic health record. Through the use of these tools and teamwork, delayed cord clamping was implemented as standardized practice across six hospitals within this health care system.