The Importance of Early Epidurals

Blake: It's always important for the obstetric and midwifery team to do a vaginal examination before a woman has an epidural. Some situations in which we actually encourage women to have an epidural block. The other patient group that we encourage to have early epidurals are sort of increased BMI patients. And the reason behind this is one they do have an increased requirement of intervention during labour so whether that's going to cesarean section or some other form of assisted delivery which often obviously requires some form of analgesia.