The Family Birthplace at Cape Cod Hospital has been selected to take part in the TeamBirth initiative.
TeamBirth ensures maternity patients and the clinical team caring for them at The Family Birthplace – including OB/GYNs, midwives, lactation consultants, nurses and pediatricians – have shared input and understanding into decisions during labor and delivery. Studies indicate that this shared input and collaboration has a positive impact on patient safety and outcomes, helping to reduce the number of Cesarean sections, which pose risks for newborns and mothers.
Cape Cod Hospital was chosen to participate in this program along with nine other Massachusetts hospitals. The state perinatal collaborative of Massachusetts will be featuring this project as the gold model of labor and delivery care.
The TeamBirth initiative was created by Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and is supported by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. The program promotes communication and teamwork during huddles and is structured through a simple, shared whiteboard in the labor room aiming to:
- Promote the roles of the laboring patient, nurse, and delivering provider as members of the care team with equally valuable input for decision-making
- Elicit the patient’s preferences, symptoms, and subjective experiences and integrate with clinical data to inform patient care plans
- Distinguish maternal, fetal, and labor progress statuses and care plans
- Set shared expectations for the next planned evaluation
“The emphasis on TeamBirth demonstrates our ongoing commitment to meeting the highest standards of care for mothers and their babies and reinforces our emphasis of seeking new, evidence-based practices to further improve our patient experience and outcomes,” said Dr. William Agel, Chief Medical Officer at Cape Cod Healthcare and an OB/GYN specialist.
Learn more about this initiative at www.capecodhealth.org/team-birth
