What's new?
This is the second edition of CHKS standards for Maternity and Specialist Neonatal Care Services which address the importance of individualised care for the pregnant women and her family, and normalisation of birth wherever possible. They also address common concerns of professional competence, clinical governance, leadership and teamwork.
The structure of these standards has been revised to improve the flow. There are now two sections, one relating to leadership and service management and the second relating to personalised care.
Feedback from existing CHKS clients have been incorporated into this revision as have comments from external experts in the field – see Key References and Consultation section.
Standards contents list
SECTION 1 - LEADERSHIP AND SERVICE MANAGEMENT
Standard 1: Leadership, Management and Competent Workforce
Standard 2: Information governance
Standard 3: Quality
Standard 4: Risk and safety
Standard 5: Service delivery
SECTION 2 – PERSONALISED CARE
Standard 6: Antenatal Care
Standard 7: Intrapartum Care
Standard 8: Postpartum Care
Standard 9: Specialist Neonatal Care
All new criteria have been identified as such and in total there are 87 new criteria. The majority of these relate to organisational leadership, quality, risk and safety and information governance. The 2011 standards had 617 criteria, so there are 134 less criteria in this new version.
The references have been put at the end of each section and these are uploaded to AO as supporting documentation.
The restructuring of the sections has led to less repetition with the goal of producing a more succinct, service focused set of standards.
