Intermountain Saint Joseph Hospital Welcomes First Doulas in Training to Enhance Maternal Care

Intermountain Saint Joseph Hospital has welcomed many newcomers in its mother and baby unit over the years, but the newest are a first for the hospital – doulas in training. Doulas are non-medical care providers who offer physical, emotional, and informational support for someone during pregnancy, labor, childbirth, and the postpartum period.

This month, Saint Joseph Hospital will host its first doulas in training as they complete their clinical rotations with each student spending at least 50 hours with caregivers in the hospital’s labor, delivery, and postpartum units.

“We have welcomed doulas and had a partnership with a doula organization for a few years now and are very excited to take this next step. Saint Joseph Hospital has a legacy of being a place where we train future clinicians from radiology technicians to nurses to physicians,” said director of women’s outpatient programs Heather Hagenson. “We are pleased to extend our learning culture to include this new group of care providers.”

The doulas in training are students at Allo Doula Academy in Westminster. Founders and owners Sarah Lind and Sarah Dominguez said their nationally recognized program is the only one in the country that requires students to complete a clinical rotation as part of the 200-hour training.

“Just like other clinical professionals, students have to do their clinical rotations in a local hospital or center as part of their requirements,” Sarah Lind said.

The program requires each student to attend five births, support a patient who undergoes an epidural, support a patient who has a c-section delivery, and provide care in the postpartum unit. Because Saint Joe’s delivers more than 3,700 babies annually, students have plenty of learning opportunities, Lind said.

“In the same way other clinical providers observe, that’s kind of how it is with doula support,” she said.

Hagenson said Saint Joseph Hospital recognizes the benefits doulas can provide to patients in labor and delivery. Research has shown that when doulas are involved in childbirth, there are shorter labors, fewer deliveries by c-section, less use of pain medication, and higher patient satisfaction, she said.

The caregivers benefit when the doulas have a better understanding of what it’s like to see patients in the hospital and are familiar with the workflows of the labor and delivery team.

Lind also said students need to know how they can support the staff by taking on non-clinical tasks. “How can they take those tasks off the plate of nursing staff so (the nurses) can do the life-saving medical skills.”

The fact that Saint Joe’s is a teaching hospital is a big deal, Lind said. Interacting with healthcare professionals from different disciplines makes for a more robust experience, she said.

Lind said she and Dominguez created their program and partnered with a hospital that trains obstetrics residents to help overcome the perception of doulas being “a little bit of a wild card.”

“There’s not a lot of standardization in training programs or regulation for doulas healthcare historically,” Lind said. “We wanted to bridge that gap and help establish a standard and a training that emphasized a teamwork approach.”

About Intermountain Health

Headquartered in Utah with locations in six states and additional operations across the western U.S., Intermountain Health is a nonprofit system of 33 hospitals, 385 clinics, medical groups with some 4,600 employed physicians and advanced care providers, a health plans division called Select Health with more than one million members, and other health services. Helping people live the healthiest lives possible, Intermountain is committed to improving community health and is widely recognized as a leader in transforming healthcare by using evidence-based best practices to consistently deliver high-quality outcomes at sustainable costs. For more information or updates, see https://intermountainhealthcare.org/news.