Enhancing general practice referrals for women of refugee background to maternity care

This paper presents the findings from a quality improvement project implemented by a maternity hospital located in a region of high refugee settlement. The project was designed to improve the completeness of general practice referral information to enable triage to maternity care that would best meet the needs of women of refugee background. Referral information included four data items - country of birth, year of arrival in Australia, language spoken and interpreter required - used in combination to provide a proxy measure of refugee background. A communication strategy and professional development activity engaged general practitioners (GPs) in the rationale for collecting the four data items on a new referral form. Audits of referrals to the maternity hospital before, and at two time points following the quality improvement activity, indicated that very few referrals were completed on the new form. There were modest improvements in the recording of two items - country of birth and interpreter required. Overall, two-thirds of referrals did not contain information on interpreter requirements. Changing practice will require a more cohesive approach involving GPs in the co-design of the form and development of the quality improvement strategy.