Media Release: Safer Baby Bundle Launches in QLD

Safer Baby Bundle Rolls Out to Reduce the Rate of Stillbirth in Queensland

Thirty-six hospitals across Queensland will today begin implementing a new program designed to significantly reduce the rate of late gestation stillbirth.

Maternity healthcare professionals across the state—from Queensland’s largest maternity hospitals, Mater Mothers’ Hospital and the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, to smaller regional hospitals in Ayr, Biloela and Thursday Island—will benefit from new training and support to help keep more women and their babies safe through pregnancy.

Six babies are stillborn every day in Australia; a rate that has changed little in two decades. This is despite research indicating up to 30 per cent of stillbirths could be avoided with the provision of better care.

Clinical Excellence Queensland has partnered with the Centre of Research Excellence in Stillbirth (Stillbirth CRE) to deliver the Safer Baby Bundle—a set of clinical recommendations designed to reduce the rate of stillbirth in Queensland by 20 per cent.

Achieving this target would mean around 80 families a year are spared the devastation of having a stillborn baby.

The Safer Baby Bundle is designed to improve the care women and their families receive by targeting five areas where research shows lives can be saved. These are:

1. Supporting women to stop smoking in pregnancy.
2. Improving detection and management of fetal growth restriction.
3. Raising awareness and improving care for women with decreased fetal movements.
4. Improving awareness of sleeping on either side after 28 weeks.
5. Improving shared decision-making about the timing of birth for women with risk factors
   for stillbirth.

For each of these target areas, maternity services will implement new or updated care pathways, best practice recommendations, evaluation strategies, and both face-to-face and eLearning educational modules.

Stillbirth CRE Director Professor Vicki Flenady said it was wonderful to see 36 hospitals across Queensland supporting this important, life-saving intervention.

“Unfortunately, the research tells us that the further a woman lives away from a metropolitan area, the greater her risk is of stillbirth. I’m really pleased we have so many hospitals in Queensland participating in the Safer Baby Bundle.”

“The Safer Baby Bundle initiative has been designed so clinicians, regardless of where they work, can access our eLearning modules and have the latest, best-practice evidence at hand. We want all women, regardless of where they live, to access consistent, high quality maternity care.”

Deputy Director-General, Clinical Excellence Queensland, Dr Jillann Farmer said the Safer Baby Bundle was just one way CEQ is supporting health services to deliver better maternity care.

“We have a broad maternity agenda that is seeking to improve care right across the continuum including rural maternity, Midwifery Navigators, midwifery continuity of care, and better supporting women with informed decision making.”

ENDS

Media Contact

Contact Media
Centre of Research Excellence in Stillbirth
+61 7 3163 3829 or + 61 7 3163 6326 | stillbirthcre@mater.uq.edu.au

For a full list of the Queensland hospitals involved in the Safer Baby Bundle initiative, go to:
https://clinicalexcellence.qld.gov.au/priority-areas/safety-and-quality/safer-baby-bundle

For more information on the Safer Baby Bundle, visit http://learn.stillbirthcre.org.au