Our mission is to ensure the highest quality of care to each patient. We focus on improving the quality of each patient interaction, from an annual wellness visit to gynecological surgeries to labor and delivery.
Several multi-disciplinary teams meet monthly to guide our efforts. All of our improvements focus on providing an optimal experience for the women who entrust us with their health.
We plan to create an enduring culture:
Team STEPPS is an interdisciplinary team training program developed by AHRQ. In our obstetrics division, we have implemented this evidenced-based program in order to continue working on improving the safe and quality care we provide to our patients.
A group of nurses and physicians went through the Team STEPPS master trainer course in order to share the tools with our colleagues on labor and delivery. All of our physicians including obstetrics, anesthesia and maternal fetal medicine as well as the nursing, OR tech and HUC staff went through training and case-based simulations to learn these tools and to practice using them in emergency scenarios. Following the simulations, we have implemented the tools on labor and delivery.
Examples of Team STEPPS in action include regular meetings of all physicians and staff on labor and delivery throughout the day to ensure everyone who cares for our patients is updated on changes in patient status so that needs or problems can be anticipated before they happen. These meetings allow staff working in different areas (nursing, anesthesia, OB) to share information with each other to keep everyone on the same page.
We also implemented a standardized handoff tool to reduce communication errors which can sometimes contribute to patient safety events. Our goal is to continue to monitor the success of this implementation and to continue providing the safest and best quality care for each woman and baby that is cared for at the Froedtert Birth Center.
