Maternity and Neonatal Safety Improvement Programme

Background to our work

The Maternity and Neonatal Safety Improvement Programme, was renamed following the launch of the NHS Patient Safety Strategy in 2019, which was updated in February 2021. It was previously known as the Maternal and Neonatal Health Safety Collaborative.

The Maternity and Neonatal Safety Improvement Programme is led by the National Patient Safety Improvement Programme team and covers all maternity and neonatal services across England. It continues to be supported by 15 regionally-based Patient Safety Collaboratives, hosted by the Health Innovation Network.

Aims of the programme

The Maternity and Neonatal Safety Improvement Programme is one of the National Patient Safety Improvement Programmes in place to help deliver better care for patients.

The programme aims to:

  • Improve the safety and outcomes of maternal and neonatal care by reducing unwarranted variation and provide a high quality healthcare experience for all women, babies and families across maternity and neonatal care settings in England.
  • Contribute to the national ambition, set out the NHS Long Term Plan to reduce the rates of maternal and neonatal deaths, stillbirths, and brain injuries that occur during or soon after birth by 50% by 2025.
  • Contribute to the national ambition, set out in Safer maternity care: progress and next steps to reduce the national rate of preterm births from 8% to 6%.

The programme is currently focussing on two key workstreams, Deterioration and optimisation and stabilisation of the very preterm infant workstream.

Deterioration

The Deterioration workstream aims to improve the prevention, identification, escalation, and response (PIER) to maternal and neonatal deterioration through designing and testing the following tools, for frontline maternity staff to improve safety for service users:

  • The Maternity Early Warning Score (MEWS) tool
  • The Newborn Early Warning Trigger and Track (NEWTT2).

NEWTT2 was published by the British Association of Perinatal Medicine (BAPM) in January 2023.

The national MEWS is currently being implemented within Pathfinder Organisations, Early adopters that have yet to transition to a digital capture of vital signs. A digital specification is due for completion in the summer of 2024.

Optimisation and stabilisation of the very preterm infant

The optimisation and stabilisation of the very preterm infant workstream supports the national adoption and spread of the care pathway consisting of nine evidence-based interventions set out by the British Association of Perinatal Medicine (BPMA):

This workstream helps to ensure the preterm perinatal optimisation care pathway is spread and adopted across England, as well as to increase overall compliance with every component of the care bundle. This aligns with Saving Babies Lives V3 safety Element point

Contact us

If you would like further information, have any questions about the Maternal and Neonatal Safety Improvement Programme please visit our FutureNHS collaboration space Maternity and Neonatal Safety Improvement Programme – FutureNHS Collaboration Platform, or email patientsafety.enquiries@nhs.net.