Sunday, Sep 26 - Expo Hall Opening
Sunday, Sep 26 - Job Fair
Monday,
Sep 27 - AWHONN's Block Party
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Title: Another Set of Eyes: Remote Fetal Monitoring Surveillance Aids the Busy Labor and Delivery Unit
Discipline: Childbearing (CB)
Learning Objectives:
Submission Description:- Describe the logistics of setting up the remote fetal monitoring surveillance program.
- Discuss the implementation of the program and the pilot study in the tertiary care labor and delivery unit.
- Describe the future of the program and its use in the rural labor and delivery setting.
Remember those days on labor and delivery when patients were coming out of the walls? Often it was a struggle to take a bathroom break, much less take a lunch break. Wouldn’t it have been great to have another nurse there to watch your fetal monitoring strip a minute? This is exactly what ANGELS at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences did for their nurses on labor and delivery. The innovative new program is called ANGEL Shield.
ANGEL Shield is housed in the ANGELS Call Center which provides 24/7 phone consultation, triage, and transport facilitation to providers and patients throughout Arkansas. A section of the call center houses a computer with multiple screens where the fetal monitoring tracings from labor and delivery are transmitted. Experienced labor and delivery nurses remotely monitor the fetal monitoring tracings. Protocols were developed collaboratively between the nurses on labor and delivery and the ANGEL Shield nurses. The protocols specify when the ANGEL Shield nurse is to contact the nurse on labor and delivery and who to call when the nurse is unavailable.
As with any program, there are growing pains. The protocols are revised and improved as the program develops. ANGEL Shield plans to expand its program out to rural hospitals and providers. In small town Arkansas, often there are only two labor and delivery nurses on a unit at a time. They must manage all of the care for the patients on labor and delivery and postpartum. The ANGEL Shield program can provide them the support they need in emergent situations. ANGEL Shield helps ‘watch the back’ of busy labor and delivery nurses.
