Changing name NHS

[sweetdreamstenasee]

Hello

I got pregnant very shortly after I got married.

I had some issues with my marriage certificate getting lost and there was a delay in it getting to me, which meant I started my pregnancy care with my chosen hospital before I was in a position to change my name.

I'm now looking at changing my name with the NHS as a priority now I am able, but have a couple of concerns.

I'm 6 months and have had all relevant appointments, have a folder with all my information.

• if I can my name now, will this affect my NHS records and cause the possibility for confusion? All records thus far have been in my maiden name.
• If I choose to wait after the birth to change my name to avoid any room for error, will the birth certificate show my maiden name? I ideally want us all to have the same name on certificate.
• I'm also sending off my Maternity Allowance form. The MatB1 currently has my maiden name, the allowance form with my national insurance numbers corresponds to my married name with HMRC.

Has anyone either been in this position or can offer any advice?
To sum up, I'm very keen to get my details updated ASAP but am apprehensive if this will affect my pregnancy records, and equally concerned if it will cause issues if I don't change it.

I think you’ll be ok as your nhs number won’t change and that’s where everything is stored I think

You can easily change your name as long as you can provide official ID with your new name on it.
Contact your GP practice manager and ask what they need.
I did mine by email, just sent a scanned copy of my passport.

Make the change asap with your GP and that will update what’s called the central spine which will then amend your records with the midwifery team. You’d just need to ask for your records to have new stickers then.

I hadn't legally changed my name when we registered DS, for a similar reason of having a lot of treatment at the time and also moving house so didn't want to add in more confusion.

His birth certificate says my married name, also known as 'maiden name'. But the married name is the main one. Just took marriage certificate to the registration.

Congratulations on your pregnancy!
I changed to my married name when I became pregnant. I'm not sure how I managed to do it but my nhs record is correct now but my GP still holds my maiden name which has caused a few issues in that my consultant has written to my GP and they have ignored the correspondence. I just need to go in to the surgery with my marriage cert to sort that out, but I haven't gotten round to that yet.
I'm only 22 weeks so I haven't had my matb form yet. It will be interesting to see what name they use for me. But I would imagine it needs to have your married name.

I have been under consultant care for many years and all my care/appointments have carried on as normal from when I changed my name (back in December) So with that in mind I would go ahead and change your info! Just make sure the GP and NHS hold the same name for you!

As above simple as pie, but your nhs record has absolutely nothing to do with your child’s birth record so don’t worry!

All really helpful, thanks your your responses :)
Will email my practice now and hopefully I can do it there.

Thanks all.

I got married at 6 months pregnant and it caused some confusion with my bloods and records, in the end baby was called baby "married name" and my hospital admission was all done in my married name but in hindsight I'd have left it until after birth!

Just to give a slightly different viewpoint, as I work in the NHS and have experience of this - not all GP systems are linked to hospitals. In our health board for instance the GP records have absolutely no bearing on our hospital records, they're not linked to "talk" to each other in that way. So we often have folk who say "I changed my name/address at the GP" and expect that to have automatically changed our records too, but it hasn't. In order to change the records at our hospital you would need to speak directly to someone in admin at the hospital.

It is literally just typing it in and clicking update, not a big job. Again, in our trust we do still have some paper records, not all boards have gone electronic. So they might have to print some fresh stickers, but it's no big deal.

thank you for your perspective :)