Maternal-Fetal Medicine
Director: Steven Ralston, M.D., M.P.H.
Mission
The mission of the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine is to enhance and improve obstetrical care delivered to pregnant women with a wide-range of medical, surgical, and obstetrical complications by promoting patient safety, education, and research.
Clinical Care
The Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine is dedicated to providing quality obstetrical care to women with maternal or fetal complications that affect pregnancy. The Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine provides high-risk obstetrical care to patients who have been referred from all over New England. Approximately 40% of deliveries at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center are managed or co-managed by maternal-fetal medicine specialists. Patients are followed throughout their pregnancies by their own maternal-fetal medicine specialist, or are co-managed in partnership with a low-risk obstetrician. This cooperation ensures the highest quality and continuity of care. The Division has an extremely active outreach program. Maternal-Fetal Medicine faculty offer high-level ultrasound examinations, prenatal diagnoses, and genetic counseling services at health facilities throughout Massachusetts. Over the last decade, the Division has fostered close and productive relationships with community-based OB/GYNs, and has strived to provide outstanding quality care while enhancing patient convenience and satisfaction.
Education
This division offers an intensive educational milieu for residents, medical students and attending staff. There is a close relationship between the maternal-fetal medicine division and many other service and research untis in the medical center, at the medical school, and the Harvard School of Public Health. Frequent clinical interchanges occur with anesthesiology, neonatology, genetics, radiology, renal medicine, endocrinology and hematology. A second-year resident and the obstetrical chief resident work in concert with the perinatal t eam in all academic and patient care matters.
Division members work collaboratively to provide education conferences, as well as a "hands-on" clinical experience. The focus of this education is to provide an opportunity for community practitioners to foster their skills in caring for medically compromised patients, including the sharing of practice guidelines. This program incorporates the latest evidence-based research into clinical practice.
