At any cost: a paradigm shift in the culture of caesarean section rate monitoring in the United Kingdom.

Recent reviews into maternity safety in the United Kingdom (UK) have led to a paradigm shift in culture and policy around caesarean section (CS) rate monitoring. CS rates in the UK have risen considerably over the last few decades and, in this time, there has been national effort at the level of government to kerb such rises due to concerns about the associated morbidity, and the medicalisation of birth. However, recent findings from two landmark reviews raise concerns that the pursuit of low CS rates may have caused harm to patients in some instances, and this has led the UK government to recommend cessation of the use of total CS rates as performance metric for maternity services.

Tailoring the response to COVID-19: experiences of an inner city maternity unit with a virtual patient surveillance approach.

This study outlines the characteristics and outcomes of pregnant women with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). We present the success of our 'COVID Surveillance Team' - a dedicated team of midwives and medics that regularly contact patients, identifying early any need for escalation of care. Data were collected prospectively from March to September 2020.