COVID-19 Home Oxygen Monitoring in Pregnancy

Pregnant women who test positive for COVID-19 should contact their local maternity unit for an assessment. Low blood oxygen levels or a very fast heart rate can be dangerous for women and their babies, even if they feel well. Women with COVID-19 can occasionally become unwell very quickly. Some symptomatic women who are assessed as well enough to go home, can be offered a Home Oxygen Monitor, to help enable early detection if their oxygen levels are getting too low.

While Royal College of Obstetricians (RCOG) and Royal College of Midwives (RCM) updated guidance on 20th August 2021 to recommend vaccination against COVID-19 in pregnancy, slow uptake of the vaccine amongst pregnant women in Scotland remains concerning.

Home Oxygen Monitoring (pulse oximetry), to detect low blood oxygen levels (hypoxia) associated with COVID-19, is a national Remote Health Pathway for adults, supported by the new Inhealthcare platform. Building on and learning from the successful implementation of Home Blood Pressure and Urine Monitoring across maternity services in Scotland during 2020, the National Maternity Network and national Technology Enabled Care (TEC) Team have been working to roll-out the Home Pulse Oximetry Monitoring pathway and Inhealthcare platform across maternity services.

The suite of guidance and implementation documents below are tools to support maternity professionals to detect deterioration in symptomatic pregnant women, enable timely intervention for those who need it and safer discharge from hospital.

RESOURCES

  1. COVID-19 2021-11-26 Pregnancy Home Oxygen Monitoring Clinical Guidance2021-11-26 Appendix 1 Pregnancy Home Oxygen Monitoring Flow Diagram – editable
    2021-11-26 Appendix 2 Pregnancy Home Oxygen Monitoring Paper Diary – editable
    2021-11-26 Appendix 3 Pregnancy Home Oxygen Monitoring COVID-19 REMOTE HEALTH PATHWAY (TEC)
  2. COVID-19 2021-11-26 Pregnancy Home Oxygen Monitoring Implementation Guidance 
  3. COVID-19 2021-11-26 Pregnancy Home Oxygen Monitoring Leaflet NESD1583 
  4. Videos about how to use a Pulse Oximeter in: English, Polish, Hindi , Punjab and Urdu
  5. Remote Health Monitoring COVID-19 Learning (on Turas)
  6. Technical or implementation support (by emailing tec@nhs.scot)