Hospital Francisco Gonzalvo

 

Francisco Gonzalvo Hospital (FGH) is a 148-bed provincial hospital, located east of Santo Domingo in La Romana. The hospital serves a population of 250,000 and has a variety of specialty services including inpatient adult and pediatric units, urgent and emergency care, obstetrics and gynecology. Infante Sano conducted an initial site assessment at FGH in December 2007 and determined the areas of greatest programmatic need to be: immediate newborn care, neonatal resuscitation and labor management.

Over the past two years in collaboration with Columbia University, Infante Sano started programming at FGH in March 2008 with the goal of improving the quality of care provided to women and newborns. To ensure that health care professionals had the necessary tools to deliver high quality care we supplied the essential and technologically appropriate medical equipment to the hospital, and trained doctors and nurses in life-saving techniques. Since the project began, we trained 50% of key doctors, nurses, and support staff by holding over 24 trainings in topics ranging from labor and delivery protocols to kangaroo care to newborn resuscitation. During our intervention nearly 5,000 deliveries took place at FGH and benefited from the improved care.

Successes      
We had many successes over the past couple of years. From the start of our intervention until its end in December 2009, we have recorded reductions in the fetal mortality rate, neonatal mortality rate and in the percentage of c-section deliveries. Furthermore, prior to our intervention, FGH staff did not reliably record the births at the hospital or the weights of all newborns. We are happy to report that weights are now recorded for the vast majority of births, and staff are accurately reporting on the number of births occurring at the hospital, as well as recording the type of delivery. Last but not least, the quality improvement committee that we formed continues to meet on a regular basis to discuss maternal and newborn mortality cases and review key data on how FGH can continue to improve it’s services for women and children.

Future Plans
We are excited to see how improvements continue at FGH under the local leadership. Key staff at FGH have been trained as master trainers and will continue to improve clinical practices related to vital signs, neonatal resuscitation and data collection and reporting.

 

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