Reports highlighting the rising mortality rate for pregnant or recently pregnant women in the UK, recommend that women who are not responding to standard maternity care require multidisciplinary review and care provided by a core group of midwives trained in Enhanced Maternal Care (EMC) – a standard of care aimed at improving recognition and response to deterioration and increasing safety of women who become unwell during or shortly after pregnancy but do not require critical care.
Data for women requiring EMC/obstetric high dependency unit (HDU) care is not formally collected in England but would allow us to understand care provision in maternity units including the outcomes of women and their babies, which could inform service delivery, aid service commissioning, support research (including risk prediction models) – all aimed at reducing maternal mortality.
The MEaCC project was formed to:
– Develop regional EMC guidance focusing on maternity staff training,
– Develop the MEaCC database.
– Collect data from women requiring EMC.
