NHS Borders clinical guidelines
A bed management SOP in the maternity setting focuses on ensuring the safe, efficient, and appropriate allocation of beds to women and babies across intrapartum and ante/postnatal wards.
Bed management in maternity unit standard operating procedure (SOP)
Warning
Objectives
The main goal of the bed management standard operating procedure (SOP) is to ensure patient safety, provide high quality care person centred care while optimising use of hospital resources. This will prevent overcrowding, reduce waiting times and improve patient experience
Scope
This standard operating procedure applies to all healthcare professionals working within the maternity unit within NHS Borders
Capacity requires continuous monitoring for beds available, this should involve discussion with the Senior Charge Midwife and the Labour ward co-ordinator. Further escalation may be required to Clinical Midwife manager bleep 6428, Associate Director of Midwifery bleep 5503 or out with office hours bleep hospital co-ordinator on 1412
- Timely discharge of ante/postnatal patients
- Timely review of patients and ward rounds
- Utilise beds appropriately
- Beds should be allocated based on clinical needs and appropriate care pathway e.g
Women who require high dependency care should be allocated beds within the labour ward setting or admissions with infection control priorities should be allocated a side -room
- Early recognition of potential capacity issues, so that measures can be put in place
- TURAs real-time staffing tool should be used for escalation
- In times of high demand or full capacity there should be a review of existing inpatients and expedite suitable discharges
- Discussion with medical team regarding possible re scheduling of elective admissions such as induction of labour or elective caesarean sections
- Decline transfers from other units if requested, consider repatriation of patients from other units
Early identification of estimated discharge date and time and communication with women and families should avoid unnecessary delays. Some discharge planning may involve multi-disciplinary team planning and this should be considered at an early stage. Person centred discharge should be considered for women and babies who are clinically well.
If ante/postnatal ward is becoming full then additional beds should be considered, a bed request should be placed onto the porter request system with the number of beds required These beds can be placed into the spaces in Room1 and Room 2 in ante/postnatal ward. A bed can be placed in the triage room in the ante/postnatal ward.
These additional beds should be documented on TURAs real-time staffing.
Please clean beds and rooms in line with NHS Borders Infection Control and Prevention.
In some cases the trust may need to request support from other external regions to manage patient load and divert patients to another trust. This would require multi-disciplinary team escalation and discussion.