When the birth doesn't go as planned--a manager's perspective

Andrea Galimberti, Clinical Director of Obstetrics

Paula Schofield, Nurse Director and Head of Midwifery

Sheffield Teaching Hospitals

North of England Breech Conference, Sheffield

Day 2

Rixa's note: This presentation addressed many processes and structures unique to UK. where there is a nationwide, uniform procedure for reporting and investigating adverse events. 






With regards to adverse events, what is “special” about breech?

• There are a wide range of clinical opinions about vaginal breech birth.
• Breech is an emotionally charged topic. If you expect something to wrong, your experience will confirm what you expect. It creates a very unique set of circumstances within the obstetric service. Normally clinical incidents are accepted in the obstetric service, but breech evokes a different set of reactions.
• There are varying levels of practical experience between staff at different levels of seniority. This is again peculiar to breech and unlike most things in obstetric services. You might have a young consultant with more experience in breech than an older consultant, or perhaps a very trained midwife and a consultant with no experience. This changes up the normal hierarchy/framework of calling for help.

As managers, we have 5 tasks when something goes wrong (not unique to breech)

1. Determining how serious the event is
2. Interacting with the Trust at a corporate level and with the Commissioners
3. Dealing with and supporting the family involved
4. Dealing with and supporting staff who were involved with the clinical incident. They are still our colleagues.
5. Reassuring HM Coroner that the care provided was to appropriate standards

The most important thing for clinical managers is to AVOID KNEE JERK REACTIONS! We have to be calm and supportive because another breech might come the next day and we still have to deal with that woman and that labor. We can’t create a system that makes people unable to look after the next case.

1. How do we decide how serious an event is? 
A Serious Untoward Incident (SUI) is defined as having such magnitude that the consequences have a serious impact on individuals or the organization. Based upon the "measure of consequence," birth-related significant incidents in the UK may classify as Major (leading to long-term disability) or Catastrophic (leading to death).

The risk of litigation and/or loss of reputation are also extremely high. Newspaper always love to get hold of dead baby stories.

The grading of an incident is based mainly on its consequences. Incidents graded as Serious Untoward (SU) or Moderate (M) always require a formal investigation to include root cause analysis. They would also involve a “duty of candour.” All SU or M incidents must be shared with the family involved. We can’t withhold that information; we must volunteer and share with the family all of our findings and our action plans.

2. How do we interact with the Trust and the Commissioners?
The point of contact is the Trust Clinical Governance Group. These people come from all walks of life and professions, and they are the voice of patients within the Trust at a high level. We also have a SUI group that has the final word on the grading of an incident.

If the incident is classified as SU or M, the SUI group will oversee the investigation and its reporting to the Commissioners. They have timescales for reports and actions. If the incident involves doctors in training, it is shared with the Director of Postgraduate Education.

3. How do we deal with and support the family involved?
We ensure that patients are made aware of the incident and receive an apology as appropriate. Sometimes there aren’t things to apologize for, but we should apologize when there is something warranted. Where continuing care is required, this will normally remain the responsibility of the patient’s Consultant who was involved, but sometimes it’s appropriate to change care to someone else. Postnatal support can include counseling or psychologist input. PTSD is a well-recognized consequence of difficult births.

4. How do we deal with and support staff members?
If something serious or catastrophic happens, we offer immediate practical support, day or night. We come in immediately to help at critical moments to make sure that people complete their work and records and to maintain the functionality of the obstetric service. It can be very difficult for staff to continue on with their shift after a difficult event. If it’s near the end of the shift, we might support the staff to go home once they have completed essential tasks.

Before the staff come back to work, it’s really important to meet with them, not just send them back to work the next day. In the meantime, we take a look at the case and review if the staff members can continue to work or if they might need to change areas for a time. Once the staff comes back, some people seem very able to deal with it and others don’t.

The staff will often need to be interviewed about the event, and that can be very difficult. The sooner you do the interviews and investigation, the better. We (Paula and Andrea) either do the investigations ourselves, or we engage a senior midwife or obstetrician to do it. We also prepare the Coroner’s Inquest.

5. What do we do during the investigation process?
During the investigation, staff can bring in a colleague if they wish. The staff need to understand the value of being interviewed. When things don’t go well, the medical records tend to be very scrappy. We can’t assume decision-making rationales; we need to be able to interview the staff to get their thought processes.

We try to encourage our colleagues to get support from avenues other than ourselves: maybe their GP, workplace well-being counselor, occupational health doctor, or Trust psychologist. People who see a psychologist give very positive feedback about their experiences. We are working towards having a full-time psychologist for our OBs, midwives, and neonatologists. We are optimistic that we are going to secure this full-time support. We are mindful that families are in the same position and that the full-time psychologist would also be there to support the families.

Staff feedback on the investigation process
The SUI processes can take months to decide, and the staff can get angry or frustrated at the delay. SUI reports tend to have lots of back-and-forth to clarify what happened; it takes patience.

The staff need to prepared if the investigation goes to a Coroner’s case. If that happens, they will have a Trust barrister who will support them at the Coroner’s court. When they go to the Coroner’s, we have to absolutely clear of the facts and statements. That’s why we need to support the staff right away.

We also develop action plans. It can help at the Coroner’s court to show you have developed one. The SUI reports are kept transparent, and the parents remain informed of what is happening. It is a transparent process. If the family feels they are kept informed, they are generally very grateful. The best people to champion changes and action plans are the people involved in an incident; it’s often hard because these people can feel publicly shamed among their colleagues.

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Betty-Anne Daviss: I wrote to Helen and Julia that I love the model they are creating and that it’s a model we should be following. I am a midwife doing vaginal breech births in a hospital where most of the physicians are not supportive. The pediatricians and nurses tend to want to make the Apgars lower than they really are. They make a big deal out of every single birth that occurs because the people in the room haven’t seen it often, so they think what they see is a bad outcome. But to me, it’s a great outcome and normal for breech. Things get created into a bad incident when there was nothing bad at all.

Andrea: This talk was about serious or catastrophic incidents: death or permanent disability, not low Apgar scores. Yes, there is a tendency to make things worse than they are. For minor incidents, staff are encouraged to report worrisome things (inadequate staffing levels, etc). Everything like that is investigated, but at a much lower key. Internal investigations don’t take any legal process; that’s a separate process. Our investigation is simply to learn what happened and communicate it to staff and family.

Paula: Yes, people can be very supportive. We have to be very cautious and very careful. We want to keep our colleagues well-supported, but we also can’t protect them from investigations and self-analysis. As OBs and midwives, we are terrible at deciding something is bad when it’s not really.

Andrew Bisits: I am a manager, too. When an adverse event happens, the most important thing is that people have to be stopped from any discussion about it immediately. That’s the most destructive phase--the knee-jerk reactions. You spoke about the very formal process. The other area of interest is how people get together and talk about it at a clinical meeting. It’s an important opportunity to support staff and to enhance teamwork. It’s also been, unfortunately, an opportunity to destroy teams as well because of the way people talk.

Andrea: Yes, we do tend to have debriefing meetings with a leader/mentor who wasn’t involved. The purpose is to gather information and allow them to download in a supportive environment. We also have clinical review meetings for various outcomes. Yes, you’re right, sometimes they’re scientific and sometimes they’re very emotional and destructive. That’s why we have the controlled mentor meetings to be sure they’re constructive.

Paula: We need to be very cautious with the duty of candour and with what we share in certain multidisciplanry meetings. We have to be sure things are factually based.

Q from a Trust midwife: Instead of doing individual interviews, we bring groups of peers together and give everybody an opportunity to discuss their personal statements in relation to the incidents. People were worried about what other people were saying, so the group interviews helped relieve that worry.

Paula: When we do our interviews, the senior person interviews the staff member involved. At the end, if there is contention, we bring everyone together for a group meeting. When I look at SUI reports and other internal governance documents from various Trusts, some are doing incredibly well and some are doing terribly.