Effectiveness of utilizing the WHO safe childbirth checklist on improving essential childbirth practices and maternal and perinatal outcome: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Introduction The World Health Organization (WHO) Safe Childbirth Checklist (SCC) is a 29-item checklist based on essential childbirth practices to help health-care workers to deliver consistently high quality maternal and perinatal care. The Checklist was intended to reduce maternal and perinatal mortality and address the primary cause of maternal death, intrapartum stillbirth, and early neonatal death. The objective of this review was to locate international literature reporting on the effectiveness of utilizing the WHO safe childbirth checklist on improving essential childbirth practices, early neonatal death, stillbirth, maternal mortality, and morbidity. Methods We searched MEDLINE, google scholar, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), met-Register of Controlled Trials (m-RCT) (www.controlled-trials.com), Clini-calTrials.gov (www.clinicaltrials.gov) and the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) (www.who.int/stop/search/en) to retrieve all available comparative studieshttp://www.opengrey.eu/ published in English after 2008. Two reviewers did study selection, critical appraisal, and data extraction independently. We did a random or fixedeffect meta-analysis to pool studies together and effect estimates were expressed as an odds ratio. Quality of evidence for major outcomes was assessed using the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, development, and evaluation(GRADE). Results We retained three cluster randomized trials and six pre-and-post intervention studies reporting on WHO SCC's. The WHO SCC utilization improved quality of preeclampsia management(moderate quality of evidence) (OR = 7.05 [95% CI 2.34-21.29]), maternal infection management(moderate quality of evidence) (OR = 7.29[95%CI 2.29-23.27]), Partograph

Effects of the World Health Organization Safe Childbirth Checklist on Quality of Care and Birth Outcomes in Aceh, Indonesia

“…Overall, a recent systematic review of the literature reported an association between increased application of essential birth practices and the reduction of stillbirths. 11 …”

WHO Labor Care Guide as the next generation partogram: Revolutionising the quality of care during labor

“…This Safe Childbirth Checklist demonstrated improvement in essential birth practices 4 , 5 . A meta-analysis by Tolu et al 6 has reported that several aspects of maternal and neonatal morbidity and partogram utilization could be improved with this Safe Childbirth Checklist as an additional document. A question arises whether to use the Safe Childbirth Checklist and the LCG both in all settings.…”

Effect of WHO-SCC based intra-department mentoring program on quality of intrapartum care in public sector secondary hospitals in Andhra Pradesh, India: Pre-post mixed methods evaluation

“…The stillbirth rates and newborn referral rates reduced attributable to high level of adherence to evidence-based practices during admission and childbirth in this program. Global evidence on use of WHO SCC shows mixed impact on maternal or perinatal mortality [16,19,20,25,26].…”

“…Most published evidence on use of WHO SCC reports improvements in evidence-based practices in initial months of training, particularly when combined with technical trainings, and coaching [26,27]. But in long term assessments, such as Better Birth trial the practices, that initially improved, reduced when coaching/mentoring was withdrawn [17,19].…”