Patient Safety and Quality Resources
The SMFM Patient Safety & Quality Committee (PSQC) is charged with developing materials to assist maternal-fetal medicine sub-specialists in leading quality and safety initiatives at the hospital and organizational levels. Below are checklists, quality metrics, and additional resources developed by the PSQC.
For questions related to SMFM's patient safety and quality initiatives, or for guidance and support with quality improvement efforts at your institution, please contact PSQCLeadership@smfm.org.
Regular checklists—standardized, validated, evidence- or consensus-based processes—promote consistency in obstetrical care and 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 (Reaffirmed 2025)
- Cardiovascular Disease, Checklist for Symptom Triage and Initial Work-up (October 2025)
- Cesarean Delivery, Surgical Safety Checklists (Reaffirmed 2025)
- Diabetes Mellitus, Pregestational, Antepartum Care (Updated 2026)
- HIV, Pregnancy Management (November 2020)
- Hypertensive Disorders, Postpartum Discharge (Reaffirmed 2025)
- Maternal Transport Briefing Form and Checklist (Reaffirmed 2025)
- Monochorionic Twin Pregnancy (Updated 2026)
- Operative Vaginal Delivery (Reaffirmed 2025)
- Placenta Accreta Spectrum, Emergency Checklist, Planning Worksheet, & System Preparedness Bundle (January 2024)
- Postpartum Visits for Normal and Complicated Pregnancies (Reaffirmed 2025)
- Preeclampsia, Low-Dose Aspirin, Risk Factor Screening (Updated 2026)
- Pregnancies Resulting From In Vitro Fertilization (Reaffirmed 2025)
- Stillbirth Management (June 2025)
- Thromboembolism Prophylaxis, Post-Cesarean (Reaffirmed 2025)
- Transabdominal cerclage (Reaffirmed 2025)
- Quality metrics for hypertensive disorders of pregnancy—patient education and transition to primary care (June 2025)
- Prophylactic Low-Dose Aspirin for Preeclampsia Prevention - Quality Metric and Opportunities for Quality Improvement (Reaffirmed 2025)
- Quality Metric on the Rate of Postpartum Diabetes Screening After Pregnancies with Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (Reaffirmed 2025)
- Quality Metrics for Optimal Timing of Antenatal Corticosteroid Administration (Reaffirmed 2025)
- Quality Metric for Timely Postpartum Follow-Up After Severe Hypertension (Reaffirmed 2025)
- Quality Metric for Evaluating Timely Treatment of Severe Hypertension (Reaffirmed 2025)
- Proposed Quality Metrics to Assess Accuracy of Prenatal Detection of Congenital Heart Defects (June 2020)
- SMFM Special Statements:
- Assessment and management of reported penicillin allergy in pregnancy (March 2026)
- Incorporating quality improvement roles into your maternal-fetal medicine career (March 2026)
- How to incorporate health equity into quality improvement and patient safety efforts (January 2026)
- Tools for patient safety and quality case review and response: Obstetric sepsis (April 2025)
- Clinical Quality Measures in Obstetrics (March 2024)
- Telemedicine in Obstetrics—Quality and Safety Considerations (Reaffirmed 2025)
- Cognitive Bias and Medical Error in Obstetrics - Challenges and Opportunities (Reaffirmed 2025)
- A Critique of Postpartum Readmission Rate as a Quality Metric (Reaffirmed 2025)
- Reducing the Risk of Transmitting Infection by Transvaginal Ultrasound Examination (September 2020)
- SMFM Special Reports:
- Other:
- Obstetric Safety and Quality (July 2015)
Education in patient safety and healthcare quality is essential to 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:
- Curriculum Outline: summarizes the ACGME requirements, some suggested readings and activities for each requirement and a timeline for completion.
- Quality Improvement Project Toolkit: helps fellows design, implement, analyze, and report their own quality improvement projects
- 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.