We work with teams involved in delivering maternity, neonatal and paediatric care across NHS boards to support improved outcomes for women, babies, children, and families in Scotland

Getting care right for every woman, baby and child is essential in giving Scotland’s children the best start in life. Although care in these three settings in Scotland is amongst the safest and highest quality in the world, more can be done.

A quality improvement (QI) programme designed for these care settings is a step toward improving outcomes and making care a safer, more positive experience for women, babies, children and families.

Using QI to improve the quality of care is based on the improvement journey. The key to using QI to improving the quality of care is understanding the current system to identify the areas for improvement.

Supporting the use of QI interventions amongst front line staff helps to:

• reduce stillbirth rates
• reduce postpartum haemorrhage rates
• reduce neonatal mortality
• reduce the separation of mothers and babies during postnatal care
• improve outcomes for preterm and term babies, and
• reduce harm in paediatrics.

Support for teams involved in delivering maternity, neonatal and paediatric care across NHS boards

We work in partnership with the Scottish Government, Public Health Scotland, Scottish Perinatal Network and our clinical communities.

• Embedding the Essentials of Safe Care (EoSC) into practice to create the conditions for safe care. The EoSC is a practical package of evidence-based guidance and support that enables Scotland’s health and social care system to deliver safe care. It forms the building blocks for each Scottish Patient Safety Programme (SPSP) of work.
• Delivering programme activity by:
  • engaging with teams via site visits and ongoing coaching calls, and
  • promoting the use of QI interventions, including data for improvement, amongst front line staff to improve the quality of care.
• Supporting the delivery of the SPSP Learning System to accelerate the sharing of learning and improvement work across all care services and underpins all our activities.

Get involved

You can get involved in SPSP MCQIC by:

• accessing post-webinar resources and webinar recordings
• sharing your learning by contributing to MCQIC webinars
• reviewing your local QI data
• joining the SPSP MCQIC Members Area on MS Teams
• following us on Twitter, and
• subscribing to the MCQIC mailing list using the contact address below.  

Get in touch

Email us at his.mcqic@nhs.scot if you have a question about the SPSP MCQIC or if you would like to speak to a team member about how we support the use of QI interventions to improve outcomes for women, babies, children, and families in Scotland.