Safety and Quality of Maternal and Neonatal Pathway: Implementing the Modified WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist in Two Hospitals of Italy Through a Human Factor Approach

The use of tools to support the work of health professionals in managing clinical risk is widespread particularly in high-income countries. In 2008 the WHO designed a checklist for the safety and quality of care during childbirth. A multicentric study has been conducted by the Centre GRC of the Tuscany Region (Italy) with the aim of evaluating the impact of a modified version of the WHO checklist on clinical practice, through prospective pre- and post-intervention study based on clinical records review. Statistically significant differences (p <  .01) emerged regarding the frequency of the presence of a correctly completed partogram in the medical records, which were present in 61.9% of the cases in the pre-intervention group and in 75.3% of the cases in the post-intervention group. The mixed-effects logistic model revealed also a strong significant association between the checklist presence and the presence of a correctly completed partogram (OR = 3.1; 95% CI: 1.82–5.1).