Confusion of medical records?

[daisydaisychain]

I've seen on here that if you share a full name and date of birth with somebody else then there is a slight risk of things like hospital records etc being mixed up. I have just looked at my maternity notes and my middle name isn't on the front. Do hospitals use middle names, so is an unusual middle name or two middle names a good way of avoiding this?

[TeaBelle]

Hospitals use NHS numbers to reference everything.

[Mottlemoth]

Doesn't matter what your name is really. Your baby will have an NHS number assigned at birth and that will be used on everything.

[SocksRock]

When I was at uni, I shared a name with another student at the university health service. Once when I went they had his (unisex name) notes ready instead of mine - I was there for contraception which was a fairly hilarious conversation! Anyway, the next time I went there was a massive orange sticker on my note saying SIMILAR NAME, the mix up never happened again.

This was in the era of paper notes, I would imagine with computerised notes they just go on NHS number so it really shouldn't happen. The student health service was massively apologetic about the mix up and obviously took steps to make sure it didn't happen again.

[reuset]

Yes, NHS number. The second middle name (such trouble I've found), I don't know if anybody else has one but it's omitted from so many forms and documents, or swapped with the first middle, that I don't know if you'd find it on there.