← Chapter 8
Maternal-Newborn & Paediatric Nursing · Chapter 8

The Screening Room

Screening is a clinical act with a score, not a conversational courtesy — and one item on the sheet outranks the arithmetic of all the others. Score a ten-item screen and watch what happens when the total says one thing and the self-harm item says another, follow four parents through the fourth trimester as the findings unfold, then sort the discharge teaching and delegation that keep them alive after they go home.

The clinic room

A ten-item practice screen, each item scored 0 to 3 for a maximum of 30, built on the structure of the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale. It deliberately contains no items about fatigue or sleep disturbance — those are universal after birth and would inflate every score.

Total score
0
out of 30
Self-harm item
—
item 10
Nothing scored yetAnswer the items on the left
Waiting
Screening is recommended at least once in the perinatal period and in practice at several points: the first prenatal visit, later in pregnancy, before discharge, and the comprehensive postpartum visit. Paediatric practices additionally screen the parent at the 1, 2, 4 and 6-month well-child visits, because that is where the family actually appears.
This is a teaching tool for practising interpretation and is not a diagnostic instrument. A score is a reason to assess further, never a diagnosis on its own — and a parent can score below any cut-off and still be in danger.