Welcome to preg.info
This site is maintained by the Perinatal Institute
The standardised maternity notes have been developed by a multi-disciplinary team at the Perinatal Institute, following a comprehensive consultation process with mothers, midwives and other care providers.
The notes aim to improve quality and safety of maternity care and to replace the heterogeneity of locally developed maternity records, which increase complexity of care across provider boundaries, and for doctors
and midwives moving between different units.
We always welcome and gratefully receive comments, suggestions for improvements and alerts about new guidelines. If you would like to contribute to the consultation and review process, please contact the notes team to be added to the mailing list
for consultations.
The notes are updated regularly according to national guidelines to represent the latest recommendations for best practice. They also allow consistent recording of information required for the new Maternity
Payment System and the National Maternity Dataset.
Uptake has been increasing steadily across the NHS and currently already over 60% of pregnancies in England are being managed with the Pregnancy Notes. An electronic version of all maternity notes (MiApp)
is currently being developed. For further details please see the link.
We recommend health professionals are trained to use the records prior to implementation into clinical practice. Examples of completed notes are available by clicking here. For information about training options or feedback please email: notes@perinatal.org.uk.
UPDATE
Measuring Continuity of Carer: A monitoring and evaluation framework was published October 2018 with the aim of helping Local Maternity Systems and the Maternity Transformation Programme to measure, consistently, the level of continuity of carer being provided over time and to help evaluate the extent to which particular models realise the benefits set out in the evidence.
What is meant by continuity of carer? It means each woman: -
- Should have consistency with a midwifery or clinical team that provides hands on care for her and her baby throughout the 3 phases of her maternity journey – pregnancy, labour and the postnatal period.
- Has a named midwife who takes on responsibility for coordinating her care and for ensuring all her needs and those of her baby are met, at the right time and in the right place, throughout the antenatal, intrapartum and postnatal periods.
- Has “a midwife she knows at the birth”.
- Is enabled to develop an ongoing relationship of trust with her midwife who cares for her over time.
There are 2 main models which meet these principles which Local Maternity Systems will want to consider for implementation locally:
- Team continuity, whereby each woman has an individual midwife, who is responsible for coordinating care, who works in a team of 4 to 8.
- Full case loading, whereby each midwife allocated a certain number of women (the caseload).
Neither of the 2 models need to be operated in their pure forms and may be mixed.
Continuity levels will be monitored – the aim is to gain an understanding of the extent to which continuity if being delivered locally and nationally. This will be done in 3 ways: -
- A service reported measure of who the person is who manages a specific care episode for the women concerned.
- A woman reported measure of whether women feel they have had continuity.
- By asking how teams are organising care.
For Further Information click
here
National Maternity Review – Better Births 2016 - For further information click here