The development of an eclampsia box and fire drill

Abstract

Deficiencies in the care of mothers and babies have been identified by both recent confidential enquiries into maternal mortality and deaths in infancy, and improved, multidisciplinary training has been identified as a priority. Although excellent courses do exist, they are expensive and cannot accommodate all of the midwives, doctors and ancillary staff in the UK who require training. This article presents a simple, multidisciplinary training initiative — an eclampsia 'fire drill’ — that has been used at a local level to improve confidence, team working skills and local facilities. This is a development that could be used by departments across the UK to improve their own practice and local facilities. We do not suggest that all departments uniformly adopt our box or our drill but units could develop their own using local protocols.