What are the basic principles of Birthrate Plus?
Any workforce planning system needs: • a method for assessing the workload generated by the number of clients and their different levels of care • the standard of care to be met • a means of recording staff hours required to meet those needs standards • and a formula to convert the data into staffing requirements. Birthrate Plus is based upon the standard on one to one care from a midwife for a woman during labour and delivery, together with the care of the newborn infant(s) A classification system was developed which uses clinical indicators to place mother and baby in one of five outcome categories. Full details can be found in the manual (Birthrate Plus; Ball and Washbrook 1996) and other pages on this website. The score system was designed to be easy to complete and has been applied to hundreds of thousands of mothers and babies in UK and abroad. It has remained the same since publication. A further classification is used for women who receive care in the delivery suite, but who do
