“Raising the standards, RCoA quality improvement compendium, 4th edition”, previously know as the Audit Recipe book is now available for download from the RCoA website:

There is a dedicated obstetrics chapter, including contributions by OAA Executive Committee members, covering:

• Information for mothers about analgesia and anaesthesia during delivery
• Anaesthetic care for women who are obese during pregnancy
• Response times for the provision of intrapartum analgesia and anaesthesia
• Regional analgesia during labour
• Airway and intubation problems during obstetric general anaesthesia
• Caesarean section anaesthesia: technique and failure rate
• Pain relief after caesarean section
• Monitoring of obstetric patients in recovery and receiving enhanced maternity care
• Timely anaesthetic involvement in the care of high-risk and critically ill women
• Postnatal obstetric anaesthetic adverse effects and complications
• Using patient experience data to improve care

Each recipe covers its topic succinctly and if readers wish to study in greater depth there are links to further reading, consensus documents and best practice standards as well as the curriculum, GPAS and ACSA, so departments can plan their work to meet training requirements and RCoA recommendations.
The first section of the book is a guide to improvement science, helping readers to undertake some of the suggested actions listed in the recipes to improve performance and covering all the content required in the new 2021 curriculum. We hope that by providing audit standards, improvement activities and QI methodology together in the same place, readers will be able to use the book as an effective action guide to improve care, across Obstetric anaesthetic services.