Caring for woman and baby: pragmatic advice and evidence-based theory

Pre-Obstetric Emergency Training: A Practical Approach is edited by Mark Woolcock (2018) for the Advanced Life Support Group and, in fact, does not actually claim to be a book. It is described as a manual that was designed to accompany the Pre-Obstetric Emergency Training (POET) course, which is an online plus 2-day face-to-face intense course delivered by the Advanced Life Support Group (2019). The POET course is hands-on and helps practitioners identify and manage a range of time-critical obstetric emergencies, specifically in the prehospital settings. A review of this course from a paramedic perspective was written by Eaton and Renshaw (2012), who judged it to be a fantastic course and an enjoyable continuing professional development (CPD) opportunity.

This manual is the second edition and several changes have been made including the title, which was simply Pre-hospital Obstetric Emergency Training in the first edition. The authors describe in the preface their reasons for changing the title: ‘to recognise all healthcare professionals (i.e. midwives, paramedics, nurses and doctors) who may encounter patients in their own houses and be responsible for managing patients when no obstetric staff or facilities were available’. This clearly identifies the target audience of both the manual and the course. It is no longer targeted at the narrow field of paramedic practice, but instead embraces the rapidly changing face of modern healthcare with paramedics increasingly moving into community roles alongside advanced nurses.