Huddles in Hospital Maternity Settings: A Scoping Review.

Area of Science:

• Healthcare quality improvement
• Patient safety research
• Maternity care innovation

Background:

• Safety huddles are recommended by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality for reviewing patient status.
• The Joint Commission identifies huddles as a key element of high-reliability organizations.
• Previous reviews confirm general utility of huddles, but specific applications in maternity care are under-explored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify how safety huddles have been studied in inpatient maternity settings.
• To synthesize findings with professional organization recommendations.
• To identify gaps in US-based literature on maternity safety huddles since 1999.

Main Methods:

• A scoping review guided by Arksey and O'Malley's framework.
• Searched PubMed, CINAHL, SCOPUS, and Embase databases from 1999 to 2024.
• Included gray literature, reference lists, and citing articles.

Main Results:

• 160 documents were initially identified; 47 met inclusion criteria.
• Included 11 care bundles, 10 quality improvement projects, and 4 research studies.
• The remaining 22 were editorials, position papers, and other gray literature.

Conclusions:

• There is a scarcity of research on safety huddles in hospital maternity care.
• Most existing literature lacks clear definitions of huddle participants, timing, or agenda.
• Further research is essential to clarify huddle impact on maternity outcomes, requiring explicit study definitions.