00:00 New
baby
Mother
& baby
Mother
& baby
Tilt
down from mother to baby in cot
Women
in clinic waiting room
Boy
in stroller
Guide Voice: A new baby and a welcome
arrival for this new mother.
But for some new mothers the joys of childbirth, can be tempered
by the experience of perineal tearing.
During childbirth up to 35 per cent of women may experience
tears to their perineum, the skin between the vagina and rectum.
Such damage can have long term consequences for women's health
unless properly assessed and treated – something that has not
always proved easy to do.
00:26 SOT: Naomi Bird, Senior Midwife
-“It’s important to realise how deep a
tear is, because although for most ladies a small tear will heal
perfectly well on its own and not need stitches some tears are very
deep and they can actually involve some of the rectal tissue, or
the anal sphincter. That in the long run can actually cause
ladies risks of infection and it can cause a risk of faecal
incontinence and poor bowel control later in life.”
00:54 Exterior,
University of Birmingham campus
Hospital
Ward signs
Wide
– midwives at nursing station
Close
up of midwives
Guide Voice: Now a researcher from the
University of Birmingham in the UK, working with a team of
midwives, has developed an innovative method of assessing tears,
enabling midwives to make a detailed and objective assessment of
any damage, leading to more informed decisions on what further
treatment may be required.
01:10 SOT: Dr. Alison Metcalfe, Research
Fellow, University of Birmingham -“One of the
things that we noticed was that there could be a vast variation of
natural size of second degree tear, so it might be one centimetre
or it might be seven or eight centimetres and obviously if you were
comparing suturing, non-suturing you needed to actually be able to
measure the sort of size comparisons of the tear that you were
looking at.”
01:30 Poster
of Peri-Rule
Peri-Rule
poster close-up
Hand
holding Peri-Rule
Close-up
of Peri-Rule
Guide Voice: The Peri-Rule, developed
by Dr. Alison Metcalfe and her team, will enable midwives to make
far better assessments of the severity of any damage.
01:38 SOT: Sue Tohill, Midwife/Midwifery
researcher, Birmingham Heartlands and Solihull NHS Trust
-“This is the Peri-Rule as it’s named now
that we’ve devised. What we wanted to do was actually have
measurements of what we actually assessed by observation as a
midwife. What we actually assess in the tear is actually the depth
of the tear. We wanted to measure how deep the actual tear went
into the perineal muscle.”
01:57 SOT: Naomi Bird, Senior Midwife
-“When we used the tool when it was being
audited and trailed, we actually found that we started to look at
tears very differently to how we previously assessed them.
And we were getting a much deeper understanding of the types of
tears we were getting."
02:13 move up on hand holding
Peri-Rule
Guide Voice: Use of the Peri-Rule will
significantly improve the clinical care of women after childbirth
by allowing midwives to identify the degree of any damage caused by
tears immediately after the birth. .
02:24 SOT Sue Tohill, Midwifery Researcher
-“A lot of women don’t talk about their
perineal trauma and they don’t talk about any problems that
they’ve had which is a major issue within I think post-natal
women. And I think it’s the educating not only the
women themselves, its educating the partners to know that these
things are not right. And also all health
professionals. And I think for the NHS its going to be a
major turning point because its going to reduce the people that
they see post-natally with problems, GPs that see women, and also
educating GPs because they’re also not aware of problems that
can occur.”
02:59 SOT: Naomi
Bird, Senior Midwife -“It’s very positive
for women’s health, it will have big impacts in the future.
And hopefully it will mean that women can go forward in life
without having any problems that were caused from
childbirth.”
03:11 End of cut piece
Additional Material
03:14 SOT: Dr. Alison Metcalfe, Research Fellow,
University of Birmingham – “Well, it
looks a very simple little instrument; most people would probably
be surprised to learn that it took, probably, 2 to 3 years to
develop the first prototypes that we were able to use in research
study. And since, to get it to the point where we can actually
launch it, which we’re doing in a couple of weeks time,
it’s taken 5 years in total.”
03:35 Mr. David Sturdee, Consultant
Gynaecologist
“One of the advantages of having something like the
Peri-Rule is that it does allow more accurate documentation of
perineal damage and lacerations and this could be particularly
important these days for medical-legal purposes with litigation
sometimes occurring unfortunately as a result of prolonged problems
after a delivery.”
03:56 SOT: Naomi Bird, Senior Midwife
-“It’s been previously a very taboo
subject for women to come forward and admit that they’re
having trouble post-delivery with urinary and faecal
incontinence. And because of this we’re much more aware
of the problems that ladies can actually have now. And I feel
that women are probably more confident in coming forward and
admitting that they have a problem.”
04:18 Additional
Shots – Women’s Health Care unit wide shot
Tilt
up on baby balloons
Wide
shot of couple with baby
Close
up of Man holding baby
Wide
of nursing station
c.u.
male nurse
04:50 END of additional material
