Fetal Health Surveillance NSPN 7250

As a healthcare practitioner, you are expected to follow professional standards of practice throughout all SN programs and courses. In this course, you will have opportunities to use the processes of critical thinking, systematic inquiry, communication, collaboration, leadership, professionalism, and clinical decision-making. Upon successful completion of this course, you should be able to:

• Discuss key evidence related to the various antepartum and intrapartum fetal health surveillance methods including supportive care in labour.
• Describe the physiological (intrinsic/extrinsic) controls on the fetal heart rate (FHR) including the basic principles of maternal/fetal circulation physiology.
• Identify the characteristics of fetal behavioural states and cardiovascular responses at differing gestational ages and during labour.
• Identify the antenatal and intrapartum conditions associated with an increased risk for adverse fetal outcomes.
• Identify factors that may adversely affect fetal acid/base balance and the changes that result from an academic insult.
• Interpret blood gas results and distinguish between respiratory, metabolic, and mixed acidosis.
• Describe the indications, procedure, frequency, and benefits of using intermittent auscultation (IA) as a method of fetal health surveillance.
• Describe the appropriate interpretation of IA and the clinical management for prevention and/or correction of abnormal IA findings.
• Describe the two EFM methods and the instrumentation used for monitoring uterine activity and FHR.
• Define the components of a systematic interpretation of the EFM tracing
• Identify normal, atypical, and abnormal parameters of an intrapartum EFM tracing and classify accordingly.
• Identify normal, atypical and abnormal parameters of a NST and classify accordingly.
• Describe the procedure, teaching, interpretation and follow-up for fetal movement counting (FMC) and the non-stress test (NST).
• Describe the key principles of verbal communication and written documentation related to fetal health surveillance .

Effective as of Spring/Summer 2023