From the Archives | Practice Makes Perfect and Saves Lives: The Case for Obstetric Emergency Drills

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By: Katie Millar, Senior Project Manager, Women and Health Initiative, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

The Maternal Health Task Force partnered with the Institute for Clinical Effectiveness and Health Policy (IECS), an Argentinean organization, to carry out obstetric emergency drills training for midwives and physicians for facilities in the St. Paul’s Hospital Referral Network, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The training not only strengthened the entire network’s capacity to manage postpartum hemorrhage and eclampsia, the two most common obstetric complications, but it also informed the Obstetric Emergency Drills Training Kit, a new free resource available for clinicians seeking ways to prepare for obstetric emergencies…read more

Practice Makes Perfect and Saves Lives: The Case for Obstetric Emergency Drills

Posted on

By: Katie Millar, Senior Project Manager, Women and Health Initiative, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Luckily, devastating, obstetric emergencies are rare. But due to their rarity, pregnant women are at risk of not receiving the care they need when they face life-threatening complications if clinicians don’t have a way to maintain knowledge and skills in managing obstetric emergencies. Stepping outside of the classroom, obstetric emergency drills—a simulation of managing a woman with the most common obstetric emergencies—allows both midwives and physicians to gain and maintain knowledge, build skills, develop teamwork and improve communication to safely manage these complications… read more

Taking a Walk in Her Shoes: How a Midwife Exchange Program Improved Maternal Health in Ethiopia

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By: Katie Millar, Senior Project Manager, Women and Health Initiative, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Hospital leaders and the Ethiopian Ministry of Health recognized a complicated problem in obstetric care in Addis Ababa. Primary health centers saw few patients and referred many unnecessarily to overcrowded tertiary hospitals. To help fix the problem, they created a midwife exchange program… read more