Safe motherhood: reported experience

Abstract

This is the account of an experience by health professionals in the Maria Barbosa Maternity Unit of the Clemente de Faria University Hospital, in Montes Claros, State of Minas Gerais, Brazil,in implementing the ‘Eight Steps for Safe Motherhood’ project, how it was set up and what results were attained. This project of humanizing maternity care attempts to increase coverage and improve the quality of health services, and it offers sufficient guidance to expectant mothers, as one of the priority strategies, to obtain effective care and thereby reduce mother and child morbidity and mortality. It was structured using a set of technical criteria and procedures to motivate the professionals who work directly or indirectly in providing caring for women and children. In this process of working in maternal/ child health, professionals must be qualified and competent to carry out essential obstetric functions such as providing prenatal care, labor, delivery, post-partum care and family planning. They must provide social and psychological support, counseling and education to patients and their families and to the communities in which they work. We conclude that this experience reveals the contradictions that permeate the relationships in multi-professional work and that joint construction (of the program) made possible the growth of the team. It shows that the quality of humanized services is an effort of synergies and is integrated from all levels of management of services for the patients, in line with the principles of humanization of care, of dignity and of the sexual and reproductive rights of women.