ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Med.
Sec. Obstetrics and Gynecology
Effectiveness of Staged Nursing in Reducing Labor Analgesia Complications: A Retrospective Cohort Study
Provisionally accepted
- Wuxi People's Hospital, Wuxi, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Background: The rising incidence of complications linked to labor analgesia underscores the need for targeted strategies to improve maternal outcomes. Staged nursing, a tiered approach to assessment and care, has been proposed to enhance safety and reduce adverse events during labor. Objective: This study aimed to evaluate whether staged nursing care is more effective than standard nursing in reducing the complications associated with labor analgesia. Materials and Methods: This retrospective cohort study included 278 women who received either standard nursing care or staged nursing care during labor between January 2018 and December 2021 at a tertiary care hospital. Staged nursing involved structured assessments, continuous monitoring, and individualized interventions. The primary outcomes were the incidence of analgesia-related complications. Secondary outcomes included labor duration, analgesia dosage, and maternal satisfaction. Results: The staged nursing group showed significantly lower rates of hypotension (8.6% vs. 18.0%, p=0.03), respiratory depression (2.2% vs. 7.9%, p=0.04), inadequate pain control (6.5% vs. 16.5%, p=0.01), and post-dural puncture headache (2.9% vs. 10.1%, p=0.02) compared to the control group. Satisfaction scores were higher in the intervention group (4.3 vs. 3.5, p < 0.001), and both labor duration and analgesia dosage were significantly reduced. Conclusion: Staged nursing effectively reduces complications and improves maternal satisfaction during labor. These findings suggest that structured nursing protocols can enhance maternal safety and should be considered for integration into routine obstetric care.
Keywords: staged nursing, Labor analgesia, Retrospective cohort study, complications, patientsatisfaction, Labor duration
Received: 20 Sep 2025; Accepted: 28 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ling, Hua, Huang, Ding and Xuan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Lingping Xuan
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.