Overview

This up-to-date, comprehensive and consolidated guideline on essential intrapartum care brings together new and existing WHO recommendations that, when delivered as a package, will ensure good-quality and evidence-based care irrespective of the setting or level of health care. The recommendations presented in this guideline are neither country nor region specific and acknowledge the variations that exist globally as to the level of available health services within and between countries. The guideline highlights the importance of woman-centred care to optimize the experience of labour and childbirth for women and their babies through a holistic, human rights-based approach. It introduces a global model of intrapartum care, which takes into account the complexity and diverse nature of prevailing models of care and contemporary practice.

The recommendations in this guideline are intended to inform the development of relevant national- and local-level health policies and clinical protocols. Therefore, the target audience includes national and local public health policy-makers, implementers and managers of maternal and child health programmes, health care facility managers, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), professional societies involved in the planning and management of maternal and child health services, health care professionals (including nurses, midwives, general medical practitioners and obstetricians) and academic staff involved in training health care professionals.

Contents

• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Acronyms and abbreviations
• Executive summary
  • Introduction
  • Target audience
  • Guideline development methods
  • Recommendations
• 1. Background
  • 1.1. Target audience
  • 1.2. Scope of the guideline
• 2. Methods
  • 2.1. WHO Steering Group
  • 2.2. Guideline Development Group
  • 2.3. External Review Group
  • 2.4. Technical Working Group
  • 2.5. External partners and observers
  • 2.6. Identifying priority questions and outcomes
  • 2.7. Integration of recommendations from published WHO guidelines
  • 2.8. Focus and approach
  • 2.9. Evidence identification and retrieval
  • 2.10. Quality assessment and grading of the evidence
  • 2.11. Formulation of the recommendations
  • 2.12. Decision-making during the GDG meetings
  • 2.13. Declaration of interests by external contributors
  • 2.14. Document preparation and peer review
  • 2.15. Presentation of guideline content
• 3. Evidence and recommendations
  • 3.1. Care throughout labour and birth
  • 3.2. First stage of labour
  • 3.3. Second stage of labour
  • 3.4. Third stage of labour
  • 3.5. Care of the newborn
  • 3.6. Care of the woman after birth
• 4. Implementation of this guideline: introducing the WHO intrapartum care model
• 5. Research implications
  • Care throughout labour and birth
  • First stage of labour
  • Second stage of labour
• 6. Dissemination
• 7. Applicability issues
  • 7.1. Anticipated impact of the guideline on the organization of intrapartum care
  • 7.2. Monitoring and evaluating the impact of the guideline
• 8. Updating of the guideline
• 9. References
• Annex 1. Priority guideline questions and outcomes
• Annex 2. External experts and WHO staff involved in the preparation of this guideline
• Annex 3. Summary of declarations of interest from Guideline Development Group and Technical Working Group members, and how they were managed
• Annex 4. Implementation considerations specific to individual recommendations
• Web annex. Evidence Base

Suggested citation:

WHO recommendations: intrapartum care for a positive childbirth experience. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2018. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.

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