Train together to work together: Reviewing feedback of community-based skills drills training for midwives and paramedics

Skills drills are the accepted format by which health professionals, including midwives, learn and maintain the skills to manage a range of obstetric emergencies (Rogers, 2007). It has been suggested that skills drills training should be inter-professional (Rogers, 2007), and perhaps this ought to be extended outside of the labour ward multidisciplinary setting. This was a point highlighted in the recent National Maternity Review (2016: 10), which stated that ‘those who work together should train together’. Research exploring the benefits of collaborative training would, therefore, be useful. However, such research must be conducted sensitively, assuring practitioners that the information they disclose will be kept confidential, to ensure true representation of opinions and enable further evaluation to provide the most appropriate training initiatives.

The Birthplace Study reviewed more than 64 000 births in the UK, concluding that for multiparous women, there were no significant differences in adverse perinatal outcomes between planned homebirths or midwifery units and planned births in obstetric units (Birthplace in England Collaborative Group, 2011) In fact, these women would have significantly reduced odds of an intrapartum caesarean section, instrumental birth or episiotomy. There is an acknowledged significant increased risk of adverse perinatal outcomes (intrapartum stillbirth, early neonatal death, neonatal encephalopathy, meconium aspiration syndrome, and specified birth-related injuries including brachial plexus injury) for babies of nulliparous mothers in the case of planned homebirth. However, as noted by obstetrician professor, Jim Thornton (2015):