Every year around 4,000 women in the UK give birth very early because of complications with their pregnancy. Being born too early is the leading cause of cerebral palsy, which has a lifelong impact on children and families.
Magnesium sulphate (MgSO4) given during preterm labour reduces the relative risk of cerebral palsy in very preterm infants by 30% and costs from just £1 a dose.
To increase uptake of MgSO4, the PReCePT programme was developed by Health Innovation West of England (formerly the West of England AHSN) with University Hospitals Bristol and Weston. As a result of its regional impact, PReCePT was selected as national adoption and spread programme from 2018 to 2020 by the Health Innovation Network (formerly the AHSN Network).
PReCePT was the first ever perinatal quality improvement (QI) programme delivered at scale across the whole country, bringing together midwives, obstetricians and neonatologists.
By March 2020 all 152 maternity units in England had adopted PReCePT, significantly reducing variation in administration rates of MgSO4 and achieving the national target of 85% uptake.
Resources
Delivered through the 15 innovation networks, the PReCePT programme used standardised QI resources such as toolkits, implementation guides and dashboards, along with co-produced parent information materials. Copies of these are downloadable below.
