Getting Your Maternity Notes

The right itself

Birthrights states it without qualification: "You have a right to see your own health records. You do not need a reason." The legal basis it cites is the Data Protection Act 2018, which implements the General Data Protection Regulation, together with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

People ask for their notes for very ordinary reasons — to understand what happened, to prepare for a next pregnancy, to check a detail nobody explained at the time. Birthrights notes that it is also useful "if you want to make a complaint about your care", but a complaint is not a precondition.

Two routes

The informal one first. Birthrights: "You can ask your GP, midwife, doctor or health visitor to obtain your records so that you can see them. You do not need a form to do this but can simply ask them at any time." You will usually need to go in person to the hospital or GP surgery to look at them.

The formal one is a subject access request, made in writing. Birthrights: "You usually send your subject access request to the NHS Trust's medical records manager for maternity records. You can find the address to send your request to on the website of your local NHS Trust or Board." The Information Commissioner's Office publishes advice and standard letters for this.

You also have a right to see your child's records, and a partner with parental responsibility has the same right.

How long it takes

Birthrights gives two figures, and they are not the same. "Your subject access request must be processed within 40 days. The NHS has committed to providing healthcare records in 21 days."

The forty days is the legal backstop; the twenty-one is the service commitment. If nothing has arrived by the legal deadline, that is the point at which to chase rather than to wonder.

One piece of practical advice from the same factsheet, aimed at anyone thinking about a complaint: "you may find it helpful to write down what you remember about the events while you wait for your records." Memory of a birth changes quickly, and your own account written now is worth having alongside the clinical one.

Cost

Normally nothing. Birthrights: "You should not normally have to pay a fee to see copies of your records. You can be charged a fee if you are asking for a lot of information or the information will take a lot of time and effort to process. This is unlikely to apply to maternity records." Extra copies can be charged for.

Can they say no?

Only in two narrow situations, and Birthrights says both are very unlikely to apply to maternity records:

• the holder of the records believes you could be seriously physically or mentally harmed by seeing them;
• the records reveal information about someone else who is not a healthcare professional, unless that person agrees or it is reasonable for you to see it.

If you have difficulty obtaining your records, Birthrights points you to the Information Commissioner's Office, which is the regulator you can complain to about a refused or delayed request.

How long they are kept

"Your maternity records and your child's records must be kept for 25 years after the birth of your child." That is a long window, and it means a request years later is entirely normal. Women often want their notes when they are pregnant again, which may be several years on.

What they will look like

Antenatal records shared with you during pregnancy should be written so you can understand them. Birthrights is realistic about the rest: "notes written during labour, for example, may include jargon and technical words. You can ask a health professional to go through them with you."

Expect abbreviations, a partogram or its electronic equivalent, timed entries by several different people, drug charts, and an operation note if you had a caesarean or a repair. Expect gaps too — an emergency is written up afterwards, sometimes hours afterwards, by someone who was busy.

Getting help to read them

Two routes exist, and they are different things. The first is a birth reflections or birth afterthoughts service. Birthrights: "Your local hospital may run a 'Birth Afterthoughts' or 'Birth Reflections' service where you can go through your notes and discuss what happened. You can find out if your hospital runs this service from the PALS team, whose details will be on the Trust website, or from your maternity unit. Or you can ask your GP or health visitor to help you."

NICE's postnatal guideline supports this in its own words, asking that at each postnatal contact the woman is given "the opportunity to talk about her birth experience", with information about relevant support and birth reflection services where appropriate.

The second route is PALS, the Patient Advice and Liaison Service, which the NHS describes as offering confidential advice, support and information on health-related matters and help with resolving concerns. PALS is the door to use when you are not sure who to ask.

Recording and filming

A related question, and Birthrights answers both halves. You can record a discussion with your doctor, but "you should tell them that you wish to record the discussion rather than doing it covertly". On filming a birth: ask to see your trust or board's policy, because "the staff caring for you have the right not to be filmed in a way that would identify them if they don't want to be" — while adding that if filming matters to you, the trust should try to facilitate it.

Why the notes matter beyond curiosity

NICE asks maternity teams to record consent discussions and the factors important to a woman when she decides on or declines care. That means the record is where the account of what you were told, and what you agreed to, lives. It is also what the next team reads.

If you find something in your notes that is wrong — a name, a date, an account of a conversation that did not happen — you can ask for a correction to be added. A record cannot usually be erased, but your account can be attached to it.