Quality of vital sign monitoring during obstetric hospitalizations at a regional referral and teaching hospital in Uganda: an opportunity for improvement

INTRODUCTION: vital sign monitoring is a key component of safe facility-based obstetric care. We aimed to assess quality of care around vital sign monitoring during obstetric hospitalizations in a tertiary-care facility in a resource-limited setting. METHODS: retrospective review of obstetric records at a tertiary care facility. We assessed documentation of vital signs including fetal and maternal heart rate, and maternal blood pressure, temperature, oxygen saturation and urine output. The primary outcome was the quality of vital sign monitoring (high- versus low-quality based on frequency of monitoring). We compared quality of monitoring with timing of admission, presence of complication, and delivery mode using chi-squared tests. RESULTS: among 360 records of obstetric admissions (94% of a planned random sample), 96% documented a delivery. Of these, 8% of pregnant women and 11% of postpartum women had high-quality vital sign monitoring documented on initial evaluation at admission. For women delivering during the hospitalization, 0.8% of women delivering had high-quality monitoring in the first four hours postpartum, with higher rates of high-quality monitoring in women delivering vaginally compared to those delivered by cesarean (1.4% versus 0%, p<0.001). There were no differences in rates of quality monitoring by time of admission, or obstetric complication. CONCLUSION: very few obstetric hospitalizations had high-quality vital sign monitoring. Attention towards improving vital sign monitoring is a critical need.