PMRT Programme Details | PMRT

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A collaboration led by MBRRACE-UK has been appointed by the Department of Health and Social Care (England) to maintain and continue to develop the national standardised Perinatal Mortality Review Tool (PMRT) building on the work of the DH/Sands Perinatal Mortality Review 'Task and Finish Group'. There are four aspects to the programme which are described below.

The PMRT was developed during 2017 and released in January 2018. Funded by the Department of Health (England) and the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland Governments, the tool is free to all NHS maternity and neonatal units in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The PMRT tool is wholly integrated within the MBRRACE-UK programme of work.

The PMRT was designed and will be further developed with user and parent involvement to support high quality standardised perinatal reviews on the principle of 'review once, review well'. The individuals involved in the original development of the PMRT are listed below.

Members of the original PMRT development working groups

Julie-Clare Becher: Consultant Neonatologist, Department of Neonatology, Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, Edinburgh
Charlotte Bevan: Senior Research and Prevention Officer, Sands (stillbirth and neonatal death charity)
Thomas Boby: MBRRACE-UK/PMRT Senior Programmer, National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, University of Oxford
Malli Chakraborty: Consultant in Neonatal Medicine, Regional Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff
Katy Evans: Maternity Matron, Women and Children's Directorate Governance Lead, Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, Taunton
Meg Evans: Consultant Perinatal Pathologist, Department of Pathology, Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh
David Field: Professor of Neonatal Medicine, Department of Health Sciences, University of Leicester, Leicester
Perinatal Programme Co-lead MBRRACE-UK
Charlotte Gibson: Consultant Midwife, King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, London
Alex Heazell: Professor of Obstetrics and Director of the Tommy's Research Centre, University of Manchester, Manchester
Tracey Johnston: Consultant Obstetrician, Maternal and Fetal Medicine, Birmingham Women's and Children's NHS Foundation Trust, Birmingham
Sara Kenyon: Professor in Evidence Based Maternity Care, University of Birmingham, Birmingham
Jenny Kurinczuk: National Programme Lead MBRRACE-UK, Professor of Perinatal Epidemiology, Director, National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, University of Oxford
Karen Luyt: Consultant Senior Lecturer in Neonatal Medicine, University of Bristol and University Hospitals of Bristol NHS Trust, Bristol
Kirsteen Mackay: Dr Kirsteen Mackay, Consultant Neonatologist, Jessop Wing, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Helen McElroy: Consultant Neonatologist, Medway NHS Foundation Trust, Kent
David Millar: Consultant Neonatologist, Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, Belfast
Miguel Neves: MBRRACE-UK/PMRT Programmer, National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, University of Oxford
Santosh Pattnayak: Consultant Neonatologist, Lead for Kent Neonatal Transport Service Medway NHS Foundation Trust, Kent
Sarah Prince: Clinical Fellow Perinatal Mortality Review Tool, Lindsay Stewart Centre for Audit and Clinical Informatics
Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists
Coralie Rogers: Maternity Matron, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Nottingham
Dimitrios Siassakos: Reader (Associate Professor) in Obstetrics at University College London and University College Hospital
Peter Smith: MBRRACE-UK/PMRT Programmer, National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, University of Oxford
Claire Storey: PPI representative
Melanie Sutcliffe: Consultant Neonatologist, New Cross Hospital
The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Foundation Trust, Wolverhampton
Derek Tuffnell: Professor and Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist, Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Jonathan Wyllie: Consultant Neonatologist, South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, South Tees, Professor of Neonatology and Paediatrics, Durham University

There are several aspects to the PMRT programme:

1. The PMRT tool

This aspect of the programme involves the iterative development, maintenance and further development of the standardised perinatal mortality review tool (PMRT) across NHS maternity and neonatal units in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The tool supports:

Systematic, multidisciplinary, high quality reviews of the circumstances and care leading up to and surrounding each stillbirth and neonatal death, and the deaths of babies who die in the post-neonatal period having received neonatal care;
Active communication with parents to ensure they are told that a review of their care and that of their baby will be carried out and how they can contribute to the process;
A structured process of review, learning, reporting and actions to improve future care;
Coming to a clear understanding of why each baby died, accepting that this may not always be possible even when full clinical investigations have been undertaken; this will involve a grading of the care provided;
Production of a technical clinical report for inclusion in the medical notes;
From the technical clinical report staff should write a letter for parents which includes a meaningful, plain language explanation of the review findings, why their baby died and whether, with different actions, the death of their baby might have been prevented, which also answers any questions they have about their care and that of their baby;
Summary reports generated from the tool enable the trusts/health boards and organisations commissioning care to identify emerging themes across a number of deaths to support learning and changes in the delivery and commissioning of care to improve future care and prevent the future deaths which are avoidable;
Production of national annual reports of the themes and trends associated with perinatal deaths to enable national lessons to be learned from the nation-wide system of reviews;
Parents whose baby has died have the greatest interest of all in the review of their baby's death. Alongside the national annual reports an infographic summary of the main technical report is written specifically for families and the wider public. This will help local NHS services and baby loss charities to help parents engage with the local review process and improvements in care.

2. Implementation support

Implementation support materials include:

A 'Quick- start guide' to logging on and technical IT aspects of using the PMRT;
A guidance document on conducting reviews and how to incorporate the PMRT into that process and the associated materials to support this;
As series of slide sets to cover: the purpose of the PMRT; introducing the PMRT; identifying contributory factors and root cause analysis; developing action plans and sustained improvements; and further slide sets will follow;

3. National reporting

To ensure that the lessons learned, the emerging themes and trends from local reviews are disseminated as widely as possible for the benefit of future babies, parents and families, annual national reports of the findings from the collected local reviews are produced.
A parent and public friendly infographic from the report is also made available

4. Staff training

To support local review panels in using the PMRT we are running a series of training sessions on line. Whilst on-line these are currently face-to-face.
We are undertaking development of the training session to produce an on-line on-demand training programme which will enable staff to undertake the training in their own time at their own pace and repeatedly view modules. More news to follow.