The partograph is an important clinical tool for monitoring a woman’s progress during labour and childbirth that is in routine use worldwide. The next-generation WHO partograph – the “WHO Labour Care Guide” (LCG) – has been developed to make it easier for healthcare providers to implement the latest evidence-based recommendations in routine clinical practice.

The aim of this project is for healthcare providers to pilot-test the LCG in clinical settings with low-risk women giving birth in participating hospitals, in order to evaluate its usability, feasibility and acceptability, as well as barriers and facilitators to its use.

The objectives are:

1. To assess usability of the WHO Labour Care Guide with healthcare providers;
2. To explore healthcare provider’s views on the feasibility and acceptability of the WHO Labour Care Guide;
3. To explore barriers and facilitators to implementing the WHO Labour Care Guide in routine clinical practice; and
4. To determine what (if any) improvements should be made to the WHO Labour Care Guide.

Collaborators

• Africa Center of Excellence for Population Health and Policy Bayero University, Kano State, Nigeria

• Women’s and Children’s Health Research Unit, KLE University’s Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, Belgaum 590010 Karnataka India

• Catholic University of Health and Allied Health Sciences, Archbishop Antony Mayala School of Nursing, Tanzania

• Division of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work, School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, The University of Manchester, UK

• University of Liverpool & Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Research Institute, Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital, College of Medicine, Chichiri, Blantyre 3, Malawi

• Department of Mother & Child Health, Institute for Clinical Effectiveness and Health Policy (IECS), Buenos Aires, Argentina

• Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, School of Medicine, University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya

• UNDP/UNFPA/UNICEF/WHO/World Bank Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction (HRP), Department of Reproductive Health and Research, World Health Organization, Avenue Appia 20, Geneva, Switzerland

Timeline

March 2020