Stop the Bleed and Seize Control: The Use of Simulation in Educating Emergency Department Staff Regarding Maternal Hypertension and Hemorrhage: A Quality Improvement Project

A quality improvement (QI) initiative was geared to assess and prepare Emergency Department (ED) nurses and clinical staff preparedness of pre-eclampsia and postpartum hemorrhage (PPH). The Non-Profit Hospital, with two different Emergency Room locations, currently does not have a Labor and Delivery (L&D) unit at one of their campuses. Additionally, there is no current policy or procedure set in place for the treatment of preeclamptic or postpartum women in the emergency room. As a direct result of The Joint Commission (TJC) standards and a very short timeline, a group of University of San Francisco Clinical Nurse Leader (CNL) graduate students prepare the Emergency Department clinical staff with preeclampsia and PPH scenarios through both in-person and video simulation. The CNL students created pre-implementation and post-implementation surveys in order to assess the effectiveness of the live simulation. After the in-person simulations are conducted at both Non-Profit emergency rooms, the CNL students created an educational plan to train emergency room clinical staff in effectively identifying and treating common obstetrical emergencies such as preeclampsia and postpartum hemorrhage. The video scenario will be implemented in the clinical staff’s knowledge center to be used as their annual training to meet educational needs. It is hoped that with the video simulations prepared by the CNL students, it will serve to support simulation as an educational tool for clinical staff in order to improve healthcare outcomes in preeclamptic and postpartum hemorrhage women when presenting in an Emergency Department setting