-90 minutes in length

-Focused on epidural safety including monitoring requirements, identifying and managing complications

-Designed for small groups of 8 to 10 learners

-Grounded in Kolb’s learning theory (Figure 1)

-Multi-modal approach including presentation, case-based discussions and simulation

-Deliverable by midwife educators

-Increased confidence in being able to assist an anaesthetist to place an epidural

-Increased confidence in understanding what monitoring is required for a patient with a labour epidural

-Increased confidence in identifying and managing the complications associated with labour epidurals

 

Discussion

Although midwives may not be able to influence the development of complications associated with an epidural, they have a key role in monitoring for early signs and taking initial management steps when serious complications do occur.

This learning session was able to greatly improve confidence of midwives in this area. In addition to improved confidence, participants identified key messages taken from training which were consistent with the desired learning points.

As a result, this training package will remain an integral part of the midwifery mandatory training and will be delivered by the midwife education team with the support of obstetric anaesthetists.

This project demonstrates that obstetric anaesthetists may be able to contribute to the development of the wider health care professions team in such a way that enables them to take ongoing responsibility for this learning. It has also addressed one of the key issues with anaesthetist-delivered training, which is that often the team are not able to commit sufficient time to deliver this type of training to a large team.

It is not possible to identify from the data collected how this project has translated to patient outcomes, but further audit of documented safety incidents could elucidate this.