Delivering quality care: What can emergency gynaecology learn from acute obstetrics?

Abstract

Emergency obstetric care in the UK has been systematically developed over the years to high quality standards. More recently, advances have been made in the organisation and delivery of care for women presenting with acute gynaecological problems, but a lot remains to be done, and emergency gynaecology has a lot to learn from the evolution of its sister special interest area: acute obstetric care. This paper highlights areas such as consultant presence, risk management, patient flow pathways, out-of-hours care, clinical guidelines and protocols, education and training and facilities, where lessons from obstetrics are transferrable to emergency gynaecology.

Keywords::

• Acute obstetrics
• emergency gynaecology
• general gynaecology
• quality

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.