The Perinatal Symposium held by Pomona Valley Hospital presented its 39th annual gathering of women’s health professionals this April with an outstanding itinerary of clinical and motivational speakers. The educational sessions included these topics: Opioid Use Disorder and Treatment in Pregnancy and Postpartum, Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing, Medical Misinformation, Home Birth: Understanding Women’s Motivations and the Evidence on Safety Outcomes, Stronger Than Circumstance: The Daily Practice of Gratitude and Grit, Angiogenic Biomarkers of Preeclampsia, and Ovarian Malignancy in Pregnancy. Additionally, I had the opportunity to present my own research completed during my master’s degree study here at Vanguard during their poster viewing and judging sessions throughout the day.
During the initial check-in time and poster viewing session I met several nurses from different hospitals from Orange, LA, and Riverside counties, and saw some old friends I used to work with during my new graduate nurse residence program. These professional connections only grew throughout the day during discussion sessions following educational offerings and lunch. I met RN Educators and Managers from many local Hospitals who encouraged me to have our students research their new graduate programs. We also got a chance to talk about what new graduate RNs are missing during their transition from student to professional, which gave me some fresh insight on things to help build into our nursing simulations and my clinical education.
Many of the educational offerings presented were clinically discussing new ways to use knowledge the medical field has had for a long time. For example, Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing or NIPT has been used for the detection of nuchal cord (early nervous system) defects that may point to a diagnosis of some genetic anomalies in the fetus. This test can and does consistently reflect and potential changes in the placenta as well. Now we are even seeing that it has potential to help us determine maternal likelihood of some pregnancy problems. The Biomarkers of Preeclampsia lecture was fascinating and again detailed how a common assay used in many commercial laboratories has now been FDA cleared and proven reliable for predicting severe forms of this pregnancy complication, which in some cases may be fatal.
The Medical Misinformation lecture was presented by a pediatric physician who sees new families in the hospital immediately postpartum and often is met with things like vaccine and medical treatment hesitancy for infants. Parents are now concerned that much of what they see and hear on platforms like social media may be “uncovering” conspiracies in the medical world. He reiterated the importance of supporting families through their journey of learning about what we know and what may be an adverse outcome of each treatment. Ultimately, as practitioners he urged the healthcare workers in the room to stand up for and support the reliable sources of information like the World Health Organization, American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and the American Academy of Pediatrics for the most current evidence-based information to share with families.
My personal favorite lecture was one led by two physicians and a midwife. The physicians were mother and daughter, and the midwife assisted with the delivery of the granddaughter at home. I started my career working with a group of midwives who supported community births at their Birth Center and in the homes of low-risk families. The midwifery model of care aims to work with how the woman’s body physiologically is designed and typically labors, while hospital births and obstetricians often are trained in interventions, or ways to change the natural pathway for potentially a better outcome. There are pros and cons to both focuses, and this discussion highlighted that they are complimentary to each other, not contradictory. My MSN research explored the lived experience labor and delivery nurses who have assisted women who desired to labor with no epidural or other medical interventions in a hospital setting. My study findings showed that hospitals, though medically “advanced,” have gotten away from general low intervention support that many nurses have a difficult time working within and around hospital policy. I stayed to connect with the speakers following their lecture, and they commended me on my research and said they enjoyed my poster so much that they took a photo to share with their respective teams.
