Building teams for perinatal high risk management: A collaborative educational activity for maternal child health staff working with high risk Mississippi women

Purpose: To build nursing, social services, and nutritionist skills for effective case management of high risk maternal cases.

Background: All 82 Mississippi counties have areas federally designated as medically underserved. County health clinics and staff fill critical gaps in services for high risk women and infants. Maintaining current skills to meet high risk client needs is essential to assure delivery of quality care and minimize risks for maternal cases.

Methods: A collaboration between the University of Mississippi School of Nursing faculty and the Mississippi State Department of Health sought to deliver a 2-day educational activity for nurses, social workers, nutritionists, and outreach workers providing case management services for high risk maternal cases. The educational activity focused on “team building” as a strategy for improved multidisciplinary case management. Topics covered included reviews of assessment and referral strategies, abuse and neglect, the importance of team work, and safety issues for home visits. A post-conference evaluation tool combined Likert scale self-report of achievement of learning objectives and an open ended question recruiting additional comments.

Results: More than 80% of participants reported achievement of the learning objectives for each topic. All speakers received 85-90% good or high marks. The open ended question provided varying responses with many of the usual complaints about room temperature and food quality/quantity. Of note, the open ended question revealed many concerns regarding inconsistencies for case management practices across public health districts.

Conclusions: In a state which traditionally records high rates of infant mortality and poor birth outcomes, it is essential that case management staff employ a “team” approach. This finding of inconsistent practices across public health districts identifies a need for central office staff to work more closely with district staff in assisting them to follow the established guidelines that promote optimal outcomes for high risk maternal cases.