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Creating suitable labour rooms

Yesterday I had a quick look through the labour ward here in Limerick, ahead of the practical session we will have this morning in the workshop.

I noticed that they have similar problems in this maternity unit to many others - a lack of storage room for equipment and very few bathroom and toilet facilities.

Lots of older hospitals have these problems - no-one anticipated, when these units were built, that warm water, showers and baths, would be so beneficial for enabling women to labour well. A bath was offered to women on admission in many places so that women were clean (no doubt the needs of the midwife were the main concern) but showers were not so common and were often small cubicles with little room to move. These days, when renovations are planned, putting in plumbing is the most important item to consider, as it is expensive and hard to add or change at a later date.

The lack of storage is another chronic problem. The arrival of resuscitation units, humidicribs, CTG machines, and other medical paraphernalia, not to mention patient controlled TV wall units, casual chairs, birth balls, floor mats, bean bags and birth stools all add to the clutter in many labour wards.

There is no need for a labour ward to contain any equipment that may not be needed at all, or at least not until the baby arrives. The resuscitation unit and humidicrib should be stored elsewhere, and only brought into the room if and when needed. Continuous electronic fetal monitoring is not now recommended for health labouring women, so that machine should also go elsewhere, replaced by the neat, pocket dopplers or Pinards stethoscopes that midwives can easily carry.

The labour rooms in Limerick were classic examples of clutter and little space. Some new rooms have been built and will come on line soon, but these have replicated the existing rooms and no extra bathroom or toilet facilities have been added - now there will be fewer facilities overall for their labouring women. No extra storage space has been made available either, so each room will continue to offer a very clinical, medicalised uncomfortable labouring environment for women. We’ll tackle these problems today and see if we can come up with some simple measures that could be used to create a more home-like space for women giving birth in this local hospital.

Posted by andrea at October 14, 2005 06:40 PM