Meeting Impending Medical Crises Head On During Pregnancy

One way to enhance patient safety is to develop early warning systems for health status. The National Partnership for Maternal Safety has proposed a set of criteria for early recognition of abnormal parameters in obstetric patients. Two types of early warning systems were considered: a single-parameter system (triggered by abnormal status of any single physiologic parameter in a predefined list) or an aggregate-weighted scoring system (triggered by multiple parameters that require documentation and measurement to yield a final composite score).

The Subcommittee on Vital Signs chose the single-parameter system as it is viewed to be less cumbersome, given that most maternal problems often primarily involve abnormal vital signs. The subcommitte…