The purpose of this study is to evaluate the feasibility of a pilot project to improve communication and teamwork and to increase vaginal delivery rates at hospital in the United States. TeamBirth is a rigorously designed care process to improve care and SDM across the full care team, which includes the patient, their support person(s), nurse and physician or midwife, by ensuring reliability for best practices in communication and teamwork during labor and delivery. TeamBirth aims to operationalize best practices in communication and clinical care from the major professional organizations in obstetrics, including the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists (ACOG), Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM), American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM), and Association of Women's Health, Obstetric, and Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN), to ensure these practices are occurring consistently throughout labor. Key TeamBirth practices include:
- Promoting the roles of the laboring patient, nurse, and delivering provider as members of the care team with equally valuable input for SDM,
- Eliciting the patient's preferences, symptoms, and subjective experiences and integrating them with clinical data to inform patient care plans,
- Distinguishing statuses and care plans for the mother, fetus, and labor progress, and
- Setting shared expectations for the next planned evaluation.
