OB Providers and Nursing Staff Learning Fetal Positioning Techniques

Posted 6/26/24 (Wed)

One of the U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services Healthy People 2030 goals is to reduce cesarean births among low-risk women with no prior births. It's a metric that is getting worse-in 2018 25.9% of low-risk females with no prior birth had a cesarean birth and in 2022, the percent had risen to 26.3%. With help from the SD Dept of Health's Health Improvement Innovation program, Mobridge Regional Hospital & Clinics is doing its part to reduce this growing concern.

While cesarean deliveries, or C-sections, can prevent injury and death in women who are at higher risk of complicated deliveries or have unexpected complications, they are also linked to increased risk of infection and blood clots. At Mobridge Regional Hospital, a critical access hospital with the only obstetrics department within 100 miles, medical providers delivered 64 babies in 2022. Eleven of them were c-sections. While that's much lower than the national average at 17.2%, providers and nursing staff are committed to implementing practices that reduce labor times, minimize stress on new moms and babies, and continue to lower the number of cesarean births needed.

One way to do all three of those things is fetal positioning. This innovative, non-invasive strategy works to rotate the baby into an ideal position within the womb hours before birth. To learn new techniques and the theory behind it, the organization hosted a Spinning Babies workshop by instructor Nikki Zerfas on May 30 this year, attended by thirteen nursing staff members and three obstetrics providers as well as fifteen additional attendees from outside the organization. "My favorite part was how our instructor explained the physiology behind fetal positioning-why a baby on one side of the uterus is more likely to result in an easier birth than a baby on the other side-and different positions and movements we can have the laboring mother do to encourage baby to rotate into the best possible position," one staff member shared.

Hospital staff were excited about the number of coworkers who were able to attend the workshop together. "With so many nurses and providers at the workshop," said one attendee, "It is going to be so much easier to go back to work tomorrow and work to have this education implemented. Hopefully, these new tools will help us ensure labor and delivery is as smooth and fast as possible for all the low-risk moms in our community who deliver here by choice-and the high-risk ones with emergencies that can't make it to a facility with a NICU."