Improving the Timely Delivery of Antihypertensive Medication for Severe Perinatal Hypertension in Pregnancy and Postpartum.

Objective: Sustained blood pressures ≥160/110 during pregnancy and the postpartum period require timely antihypertensive therapy. Hospital-level experiences outlining the efforts to improve timely delivery of care within 60 minutes have not been described. The objective of this analysis was to assess changes in care practices of an inpatient obstetrical health care team following the implementation of a quality improvement initiative for severe perinatal hypertension during pregnancy and the postpartum period.

Advances in Maternal Fetal Medicine: Perinatal Quality Collaboratives Working Together to Improve Maternal Outcomes.

State-based perinatal quality collaboratives (PQCs) address preventable causes of maternal and infant morbidity and mortality by implementing statewide quality improvement (QI) initiatives. They work with hospital clinical teams, obstetric provider and nursing leaders, patients and families, public health officials, and other stakeholders to provide opportunities for collaborative learning, rapid-response data, and QI science support to achieve clinical culture change. PQCs show that the application of collaborative improvement science methods to advance evidence-informed clinical practices using QI strategies contributes to improved perinatal outcomes.

The Hard Work of Improving Outcomes for Mothers and Babies: Obstetric and Perinatal Quality Improvement Initiatives Make a Difference at the Hospital, State, and National Levels.

Quality improvement efforts are an increasingly expanding focus for perinatal care providers across the United States. From successful hospital-level initiatives, there has been a growing effort to use and implement quality improvement work in substantive and meaningful ways. This article summarizes the foundations of maternal-focused, birth-focused, and neonatal-focused quality improvement initiatives to highlight the underpinnings and potential future directions of current state-level perinatal quality care collaboratives.

Validity of postpartum depression screening across socioeconomic groups: a review of the construct and common screening tools.

This integrative literature review evaluates the construct validity and potential for bias of commonly used postpartum depression screening tools in women with low socioeconomic status. Multiple search strategies were applied to identify literature addressing the validity of the Beck Depression Inventory, Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression Scale, Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, and Postpartum Depression Screening Scale from January 1980 thru January 2010. Twenty articles were identified, eight of which explicitly included women with low-socioeconomic status.