Helene Marshall – The physiology of pregnancy and assessment and treatment of Post-Partum haemorrhage

Helene chats us through the physiological changes in the pregnant women and post-partum haemorrhage assessment and management

 

Top 3 Points from this podcast:

• Consider the 4 T’s: Tone, Tissues, Trauma, Thrombin (and coagulation)
  
• If you have a woman than tells you she is at high risk for a post-partum haemorrhage you should consider giving her the 600mcg of misoprostol after she has had her baby.
• Think about the blood volume that the woman has and how she is able to tolerate a greater blood loss before she shows any signs of deterioration, this is why you need your large bore cannulas and you need to replace the fluids that she has lost and do this quickly with quite large amounts of fluid.

Resources related to this podcast:

MBRRACE- UK: Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries across the UK

Scottish Multi-professional Maternity Development Programme (SMMDP)

BASICS Scotland Portfolio Project

The animation discussed in the podcast(Requires download)

Postpartum-haemorrhage

About Helene

 

Helene has been a midwife since 1982 and has held several clinical roles, she has been the Director of the Scottish Multiprofessional programme (SMMDP) for the last 13 years.

She worked in Zambia (Africa) as a midwife in the early 80’s and met her husband a fellow scot there, she has 3 grown-up children.

She has on the SAS clinical advisory group for maternity and has a great interest for remote and rural services and pre-hospital care.

Helene was on the board of directors for the Royal College of midwives for 6 years.

She and her husband have a boat on Loch Linnhe so is often seen in those parts with Dougal an intrepid sea dog

SMMDP are part of NHS Education for Scotland and are Scotland’s leading provider of maternity and neonatal clinical skills training. SMMDP provide affordable, post-registration courses to any professional group who request training.