The Safe Motherhood Program is proud to announce that “Nurses in Low Resource Settings Save Mothers’ Lives with Non-Pneumatic Anti-Shock Garment”, published in American Journal of Maternal Child Nursing in 2012, has been selected for inclusion in “Global Emergency Medicine: A Review of the Literature From 2012”. The paper was coauthored by Dr. Farah Kausar, Jessica L. Morris, Elizabeth Butrick, and Professor Suellen Miller of the Safe Motherhood Program, Dept. of Ob/Gyn, UCSF; Professor Mohamed Fathalla of the Dept. of Ob/Gyn, Assuit University Women’s Health Center, Assuit, Eygpt; Professor Oladosu Ojengbede, University Teaching College, Ibadan, Nigeria; Professor Adetokunbo Fabamwo, Lagos State University College of Medicine, Lagos, Nigeria; Dr. Mohammed Mourad-Youssif, El Galaa Maternity Teaching Hospital, Cairo, Egypt; Imran O. Morhason-Bello, University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria; Hadiza Galadanci, Dept. of Ob/Gyn, Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano, Nigeria; and Dr. David Nsima, Dept. of Ob/Gyn, Katsina General Hospital, Katsina, Nigeria.
The paper examined data collected on 578 postpartum women with hypovolemic shock in two referral facilities in Egypt and four referral facilities in Nigeria during a pre-intervention phase and an NASG-intervention phase. Women with hemorrhage and shock in both phases were treated with the same evidence-based protocols for management of hypovolemic shock and hemorrhage, but women in the NASG-intervention phase were also placed in NASG by trained physicians, nurses, and nurse-midwives. Women in the NASG-intervention phase had 50% lower blood loss, reduced rates of hysterectomy, and lower mortality (2.3% compared to 8.5% among the pre-intervention phase women). This paper provided evidence that with training, nurses and nurse-midwives in low-resource settings can stabilize hemorrhaging women and improve their health outcomes using the NASG.
This year, 4818 articles were sourced from the published and grey literature in multiple languages and screened by the Editorial Board of the Global Emergency Medicine Literature Review. Ours was one of only twenty-eight selected for inclusion in this year’s review of papers “of the highest quality which have specific relevance to the various domains of global emergency medicine, including: emergency medicine development, disaster and humanitarian response, and emergency care in resource-limited settings”. We are honored by this high-level recognition of the NASG’s contribution to emergency obstetric care in low-resource settings and hope that inclusion in this review will encourage further adoption of the NASG.
“Global Emergency Medicine: A Review of the Literature from 2012” is available here.
