Midwifery initiatives

Stillbirth is a personal tragedy for the families involved and a serious public health problem with far reaching social, emotional and financial burdens on all involved. The rate of stillbirth in Australia is higher than other top performing countries. In many cases stillbirth is preventable, and research shows 20-30% of late gestation stillbirths could be avoided with better care.

The Safer Baby Bundle consists of 5 elements designed to reduce stillbirth rates after 28 weeks' gestation. Resources can be found at The Centre of Research Excellence in Stillbirth website (external site).

For further information about Safer Baby Bundle WA, please email: SBBWA@health.wa.gov.au.

More information about the National Stillbirth Action and Implementation plan can be found at the Department of Health and Aged Care website (external site).

The IMPROVE workshops and eLearning module are designed to address the educational needs of health professionals involved in maternity and newborn care in managing perinatal death. The content in this education program is based on the Perinatal Society of Australia and New Zealand's Perinatal Mortality Guidelines for care after stillbirth and Neonatal death. The IMPROVE education program covers appropriate practices around principles of bereavement care, communicating with parents about autopsy, clinical examination, placental and post-mortem examination, investigation, classification, and audit of stillbirth.

Resources can be found at the Stillbirth Centre of Research Excellence website (external site).

Pregnancy, birth and baby information for WA women

The WA Country Health Service (WACHS), in partnership with the Health Consumers’ Council WA (HCC), have launched the My Baby WA app – providing pregnancy, birth and baby information to Western Australian parents at the touch of a button.

Funded through Royalties for Regions, the app has been developed in consultation with other Western Australian Health Service Providers to ensure the features, tools and information are applicable to new parents regardless of where they live and how they access healthcare.

The app is available to download free from the Apple (external site) and Android (external site) app stores and is designed to function without internet connection and ensure information is tailored to individual localities.

The app features evidence-based information to aid families with:

• maternity, newborn and child health-related services in the user’s location
• tips tailored to the parents using its unique mother and father or partner mode
• a pregnancy timeline with reminders and an antenatal care schedule
• pregnancy progress information such as foetal size and development
• a Baby Bumps photo gallery and Noongar lullabies
• the ability to track appointments and tests
• examples and types of questions to ask at antenatal appointments
• the opportunity to provide feedback on care received through a Women’s Experience of Maternity Services (WEMS) survey.