"Gentle Cesarean Section"; A Collaborative Effort for a Positive Patient Experience

Many institutions are moving toward a more family centered approach to C-sections by facilitating skin-to-skin contact in the OR. The current standard of care at Magee Womens Hospital of UPMC (MWH) is immediate skin-to-skin contact, if medically appropriate, following a vaginal birth.There was not a process in place for skin-to-skin contact to be given to babies born via C-section at MWH with in the first hour after delivery. The purpose of this project was to decrease the amount of time that it takes staff to initiate skin-to-skin contact between mother and child after a C-section.