Background
Mulago hospital in Kampala has a busy maternity unit with 30,000 deliveries a year. 23% of these women have caesarean sections and some of them get post-operation complications, such as sepsis and bleedings. Problems arise when these patients’ files aren’t filled out properly and health workers don’t know what treatment has been given to them. Lack of well-documented observations may also lead to the hospital staff failing to detect early signs of complications, which can put the women’s lives in danger.

About the project
This project was created to improve the documentation of treatment and observations in women who are delivered by caesarean section at Mulago Hospital. The purpose of this was to increase early detection and treatment of health complications for these women. The project team trained the staff from the postnatal ward on how to document treatment and observations of the mothers. After the training, the team provided the staff members with regular support and supervision in their daily work and developed a protocol on how to manage women who have had caesarean sections. Lastly, a mini-pharmacy was established at the postnatal ward, to reduce the time lost by health workers having to go to the central pharmacy to collect drugs.

Results
By the end of this project, the record-keeping had improved at Mulago Hospital. More staff members documented the patients’ details related to care and support. Each patient file in the obstetrics/gynaecology ward now has a sheet for information about their treatment. All wards also have the mini-pharmacies to help save time for the health workers and enable them to give faster treatment to their patients.

Year: 2009