At the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Wilhelminenspital der Stadt Wien, Vienna, 98% of all deliveries are continuously monitored. 30% (1979) received epidural anaesthesia. The presence of the husband in the delivery room and partial rooming-in is available to all mothers. To find out if the service to expectant and delivered mothers is according to the requirement of our patients, questionnaires were distributed indiscriminately over a two-month period to 350 pregnant women and to 240 women in the puerperium. Fetal monitoring was valued positively in the majority of cases, the presence of the husband during delivery is requested in a minority of cases only, but would be welcomed by a higher proportion of puerperal women for the next delivery. Expectant mothers wished epidural anaesthesia in 50% of cases. Not only pregnant, but also delivered women demanded rooming-in, the latter group agreeing in the main with our partial form of rooming-in. Nearly 90% of mothers with rooming-in felt well prepared for baby care on leaving the hospital. We believe in the possibility of a synthesis of continuous monitoring to achieve optimum safety of delivery and family-orientated obstetrics in the hospital management of labour and the puerperium.
Anesthesia, Epidural Austria