Labour of Love: A Quality Improvement Project  S. Ahmed, N. Higgins, Craig Joyce, Darragh O'Reilly Department of Anaesthesiology, The National Maternity Hospital Dublin

Introduction

From a patient’s perspective, the theatre is an unknown entity, a source of anxiety, and a place most women do not want to give birth in. This perioperative stress is further increased by the inhumane fasting times women endure. Aiming to humanise theatre births; ‘Labour of Love’ was born. We took inspiration from the highly successful ‘new beginnings’ project at St George’s hospital in London, and our journey began with the ‘sips til section’ policy. Prolonged fasting not only contributes to women’s anxiety in the perioperative period, but the corresponding dehydration also leads to metabolic stress, ketosis and haemodynamic instability before, and during, anaesthesia. Postoperative nausea and vomiting is also heightened by those fasted preoperatively for several hours. The primary mode of anaesthesia for women undergoing elective caesarean section is neuraxial anaesthesia anyway, so why do we continue to fast them?