Expanding Labor Support Education to Nurses Caring for Women in Labor

The ability to provide emotional and physical support to a patient during one of the most significant moments of her life is a privilege afforded to intrapartum nurses who attend to laboring and delivering patients. Labor support improves birth outcomes, reduces cesarean birth rates, and decreases anesthesia use. Within the hospital context, this quality improvement project investigated the effects of educating intrapartum nurses about labor support and providing them with hands-on training. Surveys, including the Self-Efficacy Labor Support Scale, were given preeducation and posteducation to evaluate and document knowledge acquisition. Results support teaching intrapartum nurses learning evidence-based labor comfort strategies to support a woman's labor preference.