Date of Conferral

2023

Degree

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

School

Nursing

Advisor

Sue E. Bell

Abstract

The maternal early warning system (MEWS) is the single most reliable response tool to improve maternal outcomes in obstetrics. Recognition and response by nurses to the MEWS triggers was worrisome at the project site as the MEWS trigger to detect changes in the clinical conditions in obstetric patients was not applied consistently at the bedside. This project was developed to evaluate whether providing an education program on the application of MEWS to nurses in obstetrics at the practicum site would improve registered nurses’ knowledge of and appropriate responses to the MEWS trigger alarms. A literature search targeting the key words maternal early warning system, quality improvement, nursing competency, and health care outcomes in sources such as CINHAL, Medline, EBSCO, and Cochrane Reviews as well as federal, state, and local databases was used to inform the project. The four levels of the Kirkpatrick model, reaction, learning, behaviors, and results, served as the framework for educating the nurses on MEWS. The design for the project with 40 obstetrics nurses included a pretest, staff education, an immediate posttest, and a 2-week retest. Data were collected using a 5-level Likert Scale delivered on a Qualtrics platform. The responses were recoded into two categories, high confidence and low confidence, and a chi-squared analysis was used to detect any significant differences in knowledge attainment by nurses. The pretest Mean (M) = 22.00, immediate posttest Mean (M) = 36.33; the 2-week posttest follow-up Mean (M) = 35.16. The social change, supported by this project, was improvement of nurses’ recognition of MEWS trigger alarms and their reaction to reduce the occurrence of preventable maternal mortality and morbidity at the micro level.

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