Obstetric Critical Care: Developing Inter-professional Solutions to Address Staff Nurse Education

Obstetrical Critical Care (OBCC) is an emerging specialty where best practices for nursing education are needed. Within this practice setting, Intensive Care Unit (ICU) nurses care for an unfamiliar patient population and Obstetric (OB) nurses provide care at the top of their scope in an unfamiliar environment, presenting challenges to ensuring coordinated, safe care. The aim of this study was to describe the process of using an interprofessional team to develop a multi-modal, 24/7 accessible, educational toolkit with the goal of improving quality of care.



An interprofessional team was comprised of eight members from the hospital and University. There was collective expertise in Care Coordination, Healthcare/Research, Nutrition, Nursing, Leadership, Pharmacology, and Public Health. The team reviewed literature and made recommendations for toolkit development based on educational best practices.



The team conducted a thorough literature search and appraised 20 peer-reviewed articles focused on OBCC practice, educational strategies, patient/family experience, and assessment tools for staff outcomes. This work has informed a DNP presentation and written project proposal. Recommendations have been made to develop, implement, and assess the educational toolkit.



Few OBCC programs currently exist in practice; existing programs show improvement in maternal morbidity and mortality rates. This work will advance the content knowledge, increase self-confidence, and decrease anxiety of the nursing staff responsible for care of the OBCC population. The continued development, communication, and dissemination of the team processes and project into other relevant clinical topics and departments at the site will perpetuate the findings beyond the timeline of this project.



Working as an interprofessional team yielded stronger recommendations for course of action; having bedside nursing and leadership allowed the team to balance the needs of staff with the operational constraints of the units. The partnership between the hospital and academia proved invaluable in the preparation for staff education. Evidenced by a strong proposal based on research as well as the mentorship from seasoned scholars, this interprofessional team approach provides a solid foundation for continued growth and development.



This work was funded in part by support from the GHR Foundation Academic Excellence Grant to St. Catherine University and Abbott Northwestern Hospital.