#AWHONN 2016:  Day 4

The convention is coming to an end today.  What a great convention it has been!  

The first session I attended today was Improving Interprofessional Collaboration:  Best Practice Guidelines for Transfer from Planned Home Birth to Hospital Care.  This was a great session.   It highlighted the importance of collaboration between the home birth midwives and the hospital providers.  The speakers talked about development of a policy that is made in collaboration with all parties involved.  The speakers shared an important website that may be helpful for facilities developing a policy or interested in setting up a formal collaborative practice.  Here is a link to the website:  http://www.homebirthsummit.org/best-practice-transfer-guidelines/   There was also discussion about how out of hospital birth parents should let their local EMS know that they are planning a home birth and their actual due dates, etc. so they can be prepared in case of emergency. I really liked that they had a "birth plan" that would include all of the emergency activities to include where the parents would want to be transferred to in case it was needed.  Win Win for all parties involved.

The next session I attended was Oral Presentations on Postpartum Topics.  The first part of this was about Postpartum Education:  Are We Meeting Mothers' Needs and Expectations.   It seems like everyone is having the same issues, there is so much to teach new mothers about their newborns and so little time to do it.   New mothers want their visitors, their babies, and their sleep!   Hard to get it all done with all those priorities.  There was discussion on group classes vs individual teaching and it seems like most are doing individual teaching.  The last half of the session was spent on discussing Indicators for Postpartum Depression Risk.  There was discussion about the movie "Dark Side of the Full Moon" that we had seen on Day 3 as well as tools that could be used for evaluation of depression risk.  My take on this is that I am going to be more aware of mothers who have a previous history of depression and to listen more carefully to mothers postpartum.  We also have to look for resources in our community and make sure we have them in our bag of tricks to help new mothers.

The LAST session was The Power of Resilience:  Game On!  I got a whole lot out of this session.  I want to share some of the slides that spoke to me in this talk!

It was then time to do look at all the fun we will have next year in New Orleans!!  

And hug friends until next time!