The Hypocritical Oath? Unintended Consequences of Prenatal Substance Use Policies and Considerations for Health Care Providers.

Prenatal substance use (PSU) is a serious perinatal health issue in the United States with consequential health effects. To address this issue and protect children from the detrimental effects of substance exposure during pregnancy, the US government amended the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act to provide funding to states with protocol to notify child protective services of PSU cases and develop treatment plans for affected families. Although well-intentioned, this statute resulted in diverse inter- and intrastate interpretations and implementation of PSU regulations nationwide, ultimately leading to mass confusion about who the policy applies to and when it should be applied.

Critical Changes in the Maternal Health Landscape: Community Care, Doulas, and Coverage.

In this commentary, we present an overview of the accelerating trend toward community-based models for pregnancy care. Doula services, as part of community care programs, are the major target for new coverage changes. Obstetric professionals who include community care providers in their treatment plans can benefit from these local resources in the prenatal, birthing, and postpartum stages of patient management.

Can I Get a Suggestion? Medical Improv as a Tool for Empathy Training in Obstetrics and Gynecology Residents.

Background: Physician empathy is associated with improved patient outcomes. No studies have examined the outcomes of medical improvisational (improv) training on empathy.

Objective: Our aims were to determine whether an improv workshop is an effective tool to deliver empathy training for obstetrics and gynecology (OB-GYN) residents, and whether that effect is sustained over time.

Navigating the perinatal quality landscape.

The National Quality Strategy, mandated by the Affordable Care Act, outlines the triple aim of better health, better care, and lower costs. Perinatal nurses are integral to the National Quality movement as care providers, leaders, and experts. The most notable accomplishments in perinatal care of the last decade relate to the endorsement of quality measures by the National Quality Forum that provide unified goals and the quality improvement frameworks provided by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement that help systems create action and change through education, team building, process improvement, and structure.

Obstetric triage: a systematic review of the past fifteen years: 1998-2013.

Background: Triage concepts have shifted the focus of obstetric care to include obstetric triage units. The purpose of this systematic review is to examine the literature on use of triage concepts in obstetrics during a 15-year time frame.

Methods: A systematic review was completed of the obstetric triage literature from 1998 to 2013 using the electronic online databases from PubMed, CINHAL, Ovid, and Cochrane Library Reviews within the English language.