SMFM Patient Safety and Quality Resources

The SMFM Patient Safety & Quality Committee is charged with developing materials to assist maternal-fetal medicine subspecialists in providing leadership in quality & safety initiatives at hospital and organizational levels. Below are checklists, quality metrics, and additional resources developed by the committee.

NEW! Curriculum Guide for MFM Fellows (January 2023):
Education in patient safety and healthcare quality is an essential component of fellowship training in maternal-fetal medicine. To assist MFM fellows and fellowship program directors in achieving the educational objectives on patient safety and quality required by the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), SMFM's Patient Safety & Quality Committee developed the following three tools: 

1. Curriculum Outline: summarizes the ACGME requirements, some suggested readings and activities for each requirement, and a timeline for completion of each requirement. 
2. Quality Improvement Project Toolkit: helps fellows design, implement, analyze, and report their own quality improvement projects
3. Primer on Patient Safety and Healthcare Quality for MFM Fellows: provides a brief synopsis of many essential topics in patient safety and healthcare quality. Each chapter is mentioned in the Curriculum Outline as a suggested reading during the appropriate month of fellowship. 

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Checklists

The regular use of checklists—standardized, validated, evidence- or consensus-based processes—promotes consistency in obstetrical care and contributes to provide safe, efficient, high-quality patient care. The SMFM Patient Safety & Quality Committee encourages our members to incorporate the checklists below into their clinical practice to help improve the safety dynamics of their hospital. The information in the SMFM Patient Safety Checklists should not be construed as dictation of an exclusive course of treatment or procedures to be ordered. Although the components of a particular checklist may be adapted to local resources, standardization of checklists within an institution is strongly encouraged.

• Amniotic Fluid Embolism, Initial Management (April 2021)
  
• Amniocentesis or Chorionic Villous Sampling (July 2018)
• Cesarean Delivery, Surgical Safety Checklists (November 2021)
• Diabetes Mellitus, Pregestational, Antepartum Care (November 2020)
• HIV, Pregnancy Management (November 2020)
• Hypertensive Disorders, Postpartum Discharge (October 2020)
• Maternal Transport Briefing Form and Checklist (November 2020)
• Operative Vaginal Delivery (May 2020)
• Placenta Accreta Spectrum, Unexpected (September 2018)
• Placenta Accreta Spectrum, Suspected, Planning Form (September 2018)
• Postpartum Visits for Normal and Complicated Pregnancies (June 2022)
• Preeclampsia, Low-Dose Aspirin, Risk Factor Screening (September 2020)
• Pregnancies Resulting From In Vitro Fertilization (July 2022)
• Thromboembolism Prophylaxis, Post-Cesarean (October 2020)
• Twin Pregnancy, Monochorionic (November 2020)

Quality Metrics

• SMFM Special Statement: Quality Metrics for Optimal Timing of Antenatal Corticosteroid Administration (June 2022)
• SMFM Special Statement: Quality Metric for Timely Postpartum Follow-Up After Severe Hypertension (May 2022)
• SMFM Special Statement: A Critique of Postpartum Readmission Rate as a Quality Metric (April 2022)
• SMFM Special Statement: A Quality Metric for Evaluating Timely Treatment of Severe Hypertension (February 2021)
• SMFM Special Statement: Proposed Quality Metrics to Assess Accuracy of Prenatal Detection of Congenital Heart Defects (June 2020)

Additional Resources

• Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine Special Statement: Telemedicine in obstetrics—quality and safety considerations (December 2022)
  
• Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine Special Statement: Cognitive Bias and Medical Error in Obstetrics - Challenges and Opportunities (August 2022)
• SMFM Patient Safety Guideline: Reducing the Risk of Transmitting Infection by Transvaginal Ultrasound Examination (September 2020)
• SMFM Special Statement: Who’s Who in Patient Safety and Quality for Maternal Health Care in the United States (July 2020)
• SMFM Special Report: The Development and Implementation of Checklists in Obstetrics (August 2017)
  
• SMFM Special Report: Current Approaches to Measuring Quality of Care in Obstetrics (July 2016)
• Obstetric Safety and Quality (July 2015)