Pregnancy notes

[TrashPanda]

Bit of a random wondering going on in my head about why pregnancy notes are different everywhere.

I had my first baby in one NHS Trust and my second in a different one about 30 minutes down the road, currently pregnant with my third and still in the second place. My sister is a midwifery student in another NHS Trust a couple of hours away and has shown me an unused copy of the notes they use.

All 3 are completely different, for a start first were blue, second yellow and third are green. They have mostly the same sections but with different layouts and they have all been in a completely different order.

Does anyone know why they are all so different and would it not make more sense for them to be the same in the whole NHS?

Mine and my sisters are very different, different trusts have slightly different ways of doing things I guess. Mine seem to have a lot more trust specific info in than hers, about the various options for where to give birth and what to expect from the midwife team etc, she was surprised at the level of detail compared to hers.

Mine are purple, which is my favourite colour :)

Mine are online and none of it makes sense plus the hospital don’t update it when I’ve had appointments. I hate it I am constantly having to ask questions rather than just look at my notes 😬

Mines like a big yellow book. I love it because I always go through and read everything they've written after each appointment. Its interesting!

I moved house whilst pregnant and had to endure the tediousness of the booking appointment all over again as they wouldn't just copy the information from one set of notes to the next. I even offered to do it for them! I drew the line at having all the blood tests repeated though, when the results were clearly in my old notes.

It's just the structure of the NHS is very localised. So they develop their own ways of organising how information is managed. They also change from time to time. So I am with the same team, but the notes have changed considerably since I had my first 5 years ago.

My current ones are a huge yellow book with space for labour and postnatal notes but the ones my sister uses are really short but you have a new set for labour and postnatal. It's just one of those things that pregnant brain was wondering about and thinking whether it's confusing for midwives if they move. My sister read through mine and kept saying how weird they were.

There is a national minimum data set that is collect for pregnancy. But there are no rules for how these are managed. All are trying to move to electronic though