AWHONN is developing a maternity triage tool

The Association of Women’s Health, Maternity and Neonatal Nurses has developed a tool to enable an improved, standardized approach to triaging pregnant women who seek emergency or off-schedule care. The Maternal fetal segregation index It builds on previous research, best practices and other successful models developed to be used within the ED, in accordance with the press release. The MFTI provides detailed descriptions of signs and symptoms that ladies may experience in all trimesters of pregnancy. Based on these symptoms, nurses assign one in every of five severity levels to the girl and/or fetus. A brief video with additional details in regards to the MFTI tool is on the market on YouTube. “There is a clear need to standardize obstetric triage in clinical settings across the country,” AWHONN CEO Lynn Erdman, MN, RN, FAAN, said in the discharge. “The Maternal Fetal Triage Index is a strong step toward improving the way nurses triage fetuses in the United States.” Researchers examine obstetric triage and describe the content validity and cross-dimensional testing of the MFTI tool in three articles published within the November/December 2015 Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, & Neonatal Nursing In “Testing the Validity of the Maternal Fetal Selection Index” by Catherine Ruhl, MS, CNM ; Benjamin Scheich, M.S.; Brea Onokpise, MPH, CHES; and Debra Bingham, DrPH, RN, FANN, describe the strategy of validating the MFTI tool by a multidisciplinary group of clinicians. In “Interrater Reliability Testing of the Maternal Fetal Triage Index,” the authors compared blinded paired triage assessments conducted by nurses using the MFTI tool in a big suburban hospital. They found that nurse-assigned priority levels agreed with the MFTI nurse 72.9% of the time and that there was no significant difference within the accuracy of priority level assignments between the day and night shifts. The results of this study show that the MFTI tool could also be really useful to be used in maternity triage facilities, in accordance with the discharge. In “Women’s Satisfaction with Maternity Triage Services” by Marilyn K. Evans, RN, PhD; Nancy Watts, RN, MN, PNC(C); and Robert Gratton, M.D., conducted telephone interviews with women after they were discharged from the hospital’s maternity triage unit. The study found that ladies’s satisfaction during triage increased when the team used a humanizing and caring approach. Women also appreciated being informed about their well-being and the condition of their fetuses. To establish an ongoing dialogue with hospital leaders, AWHONN has established an MFTI pilot community, scheduled to launch in January. The goal of this community is to discover and evaluate successes and challenges in educating maternity nurses about triage and MFTI; discuss the challenges and obstacles in integrating the MFTI algorithm into electronic health records; and categorize best practices and barriers to implementing MFTI in labor and delivery units. To comment, please write an email [email protected].