Articles on Perinatal Quality & Safety

This article describes the evolution, impact, and clinical necessity of TeamSTEPPS, an evidence-based team training framework developed by the DoD and AHRQ to enhance healthcare safety through aviation-inspired communication strategies. By utilizing standardized tools like SBAR, CUS, and structured huddles, the program fosters psychological safety and ensures accurate information exchange among multi-disciplinary teams working in high-stress, high-risk environments.

This article explores the critical role of psychological safety in delivering safe, high-quality healthcare, particularly within multidisciplinary teams operating in complex, high-stakes environments.

Describes components of safety culture

This is a brief article highlighting the definition of a sentinel event and how organizations can learn and improve systems of care as a result.

This month’s blog post dives into a real-life clinical case involving not one, but two “never events”—and the key lessons every healthcare professional can learn from it.

Ready to take your knowledge to the next level? These C-ONQS practice questions are designed to sharpen your skills, test your understanding, and build confidence for exam day.

Discover how the Fishbone diagram enhances root cause analysis in healthcare. Learn to use the Fishbone diagram to improve patient safety.

This article provides study tips for the ONQS NCC exam

Integrating change in healthcare can be difficult for many reasons including a lack of the following resources to effectively drive change: quality support staff, data, leadership, time, adequate mentoring, knowledge of quality improvement (QI) techniques, and a culture that does not support change. The workplace culture aspect is very influential, because it includes hanging on to old practices because ‘this is the way it’s always been done’, also referred to as sacred cows

Error prevention using checklists is one strategy used by the aviation industry that was later integrated into healthcare to improve safety.

TJC requirement around patient identification is described along with errors involving patient identification.

Difficulties with intrapartum fetal heart monitoring have been identified as a key area of preventable harm.

This article discusses how humans process information related to the development of cognitive biases.

The Model for Improvement, developed by Associates in Process Improvement, is a prominent quality improvement approach in healthcare. The process establishes an aim and decides how to measure changes and what changes will achieve the aim. The model also tests changes to determine improvement through a Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle (IHI, n.d.). This article describes this approach, with one hospital’s experience using PDSA to improve an obstetric hemorrhage team response. H

In this hospital example, triage occurred on the labor unit. Care providers assigned to triage could also be caring for patients outside of

A 32-year-old G2 P1 undergoes an elective induction of labor at 39 weeks. She’s admitted at 6 a.m. The night nurse quickly starts....

Before putting quality and safety work into practice, it’s important to plan for the challenges brought on by implementation and sustainability. Challenges include lack of upper-level support/commitment and personnel, project fatigue, and competing priorities. These represent an organizational commitment to quality and safety, adequate support, and use of an organized approach with careful consideration to the current state of project work and what is being asked of all staff

This article discusses severe maternal morbidity and mortality in the United States.

This article describes the six sigma roadmap and describes one hospitals experience using this model to reduce bed turnaround time.

This article discusses symptoms experienced by the Second Victim, stages of response, and supportive strategies.