Why regularly weighing pregnant patients is important

An Australian hospital's bid to encourage staff to weigh pregnant patients regularly has had a healthy effect on gestational weight gain.

Researchers from Mater Health in Queensland wanted mums-to-be weighed at every visit — something that was only happening for 4% of their antenatal patients.

Through some simple interventions, such as ensuring there were weighing scales in each antenatal room and providing staff training, they managed to up the proportion of women weighed at every visit to 19%.

But the big breakthrough came when the hospital altered its computerised e-health records system to remove the default that skipped the input of weight information.

This resulted in 62% of women having their weight measured at every antenatal visit, the authors reported in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth.

The interventions