Risk management in obstetrics

Risk management is an integral part of clinical care in the UK. It is vital that all clinicians, mangers and commissioners understand the underlying principles and how it works in practice. It is a useful tool in driving forward the quality of patient care combining as it does evidence based medicine (pro-active risk management) and response to incidence and complaints (re-active risk management).The risk management team will be responsible for ensuring that guidelines are up to date, national reports are responded to, training of all staff is in line with national recommendations and there is a good system for responding to, investigating and learning from all incidents, complaints and claims.This review will describe some of the principles of risk management and the role of the National Health Service Litigation Authority (NHSLA). We have also outlined two case reports to illustrate how risk management works in practice.