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This is an optional setup, not one of the five numbered steps. Do it whenever you are ready, once step 1 is done and your clinical staff are in — granting the permissions needs people to grant them to.

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Switch the area on

1

Open Settings → Facility

The card is headed Facility — “Which departments this hospital runs. These control what appears in navigation.”
2

Find Maternity under Clinical units

It sits alongside In-patient care, In-house pharmacy, Surgical theatre and Diagnostics, and describes itself as “Antenatal clinic — pregnancy records, contact schedule and register.” Like the theatre, it starts off, because most hospitals that sign up do not run an antenatal clinic.
3

Switch it on

It saves the moment you flip it and confirms Area enabled — “It now appears in navigation.” Switching it back off confirms Area hidden — “It no longer appears in navigation. Existing records stay accessible by direct link.” Nothing is deleted either way.

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What appears, and what does not

Switching Maternity on adds one group to the sidebar, with three entries in it:
  • Antenatal → Today’s Clinic, Antenatal Register and Coverage
  • Labour Ward — one screen, no sub-entries
  • Postnatal — one screen, no sub-entries
A woman’s antenatal card hangs off Today’s Clinic rather than the sidebar — it is reached by selecting her name. It also adds two blocks to this same Facility tab: Antenatal contact schedule and Partograph, which are the next two steps. Unlike the theatre, maternity brings no settings tab of its own and no analytics report.

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Choose your contact schedule

An Antenatal contact schedule block appears on the Facility tab as soon as the area is on. It decides when each pregnancy’s next contact is due, and when she is shown as overdue on the antenatal worklist. Only the clinic owner can change it — a manager sees “Only the clinic owner can change this.” Until anyone chooses one, the block says so plainly — “No schedule has been chosen, so this clinic runs WHO 2016 — eight contacts” — because that is the schedule you are running today, not a gap.
1

Pick a schedule

WHO 2016 — eight contacts (where every hospital starts), Focused ANC — four visits, or This hospital’s own schedule.
2

Adjust it, if you run your own

Choosing This hospital’s own schedule starts from whatever is on screen, so “WHO 2016, but with one extra visit” is an edit rather than a rebuild. Each row takes From (weeks), To (weeks) and What it is called. Add contact adds a row after the last window; Remove takes one away, and the last remaining row cannot be removed.
3

Read the windows before you commit

The resolved list is printed under the form — … contacts, each numbered with its label and its week range — so you see the schedule you are taking on. A row set is refused with the reason in a sentence beneath it if the windows do not ascend or they overlap.
4

Select Save schedule

If the windows actually move, you are asked to confirm: Change the antenatal schedule? Confirm with Change schedule. It confirms Antenatal schedule saved — “The antenatal worklist and every antenatal card now measure contacts against this schedule.”
Changing the schedule applies to every open pregnancy immediately, including women already booked. Nothing is recalculated and no record changes — the worklist compares the contacts already recorded against whichever schedule is set when it is opened. So who counts as Due or Overdue can change the moment you save: women shown as up to date may appear due or overdue, and some currently overdue may not. Decide this before your first clinic rather than in the middle of a busy month.
An empty schedule of your own is refused, and the refusal says why: “an empty schedule would mark nobody due, which looks exactly like everyone being up to date.” That is the failure this rule exists to prevent — a board that quietly flags nobody is indistinguishable from a board with nothing outstanding.

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Choose your labour chart

A Partograph block sits under the schedule on the same Facility tab — “Which labour chart this clinic runs. It decides what the chart measures a labour against, and which findings are flagged on it.” Only the clinic owner can change it. Every hospital starts on the WHO Labour Care Guide (2020), and until anyone chooses one the block says so — “No chart has been chosen, so this clinic runs WHO Labour Care Guide (2020)”.
1

Read the comparison before you pick

Under Chart, choosing either option redraws a Where they disagree panel with a card per system. The one you have picked is badged Selected; the one your hospital is running right now is badged In use now. Four rows differ:
2

Read the worked example under it

A single reading, answered twice: A fetal heart rate of 115 bpm, recorded once is no flag on the Labour Care Guide and Fetal heart rate below the reference range on the classic chart. The same observation, two different answers — which is the whole reason the choice matters.
3

Read what this particular change costs

Once your choice differs from what is in force, a red panel lists only the differences that actually exist between those two — the lines appearing or disappearing, the heart-rate band moving, and whether anything is assessed after full dilatation.
4

Select Save partograph

If the choice actually changes, you are asked to confirm at Change the partograph? Confirm with Change partograph. It confirms Partograph saved — “Every labour chart in this clinic is now read against …”.
Changing the chart applies to every labour immediately, including one in progress right now. No record is changed and nothing is recalculated or migrated: a chart is measured against whichever system is set at the moment it is opened. So flags on an open labour can appear or disappear without anyone re-examining the woman. The card says this before the save and again in the confirmation.
The classic chart stops at full dilatation and assesses nothing after it. The card states this whichever system you are on: “An empty chart in the second stage means the chart is not looking — it is not a statement that the second stage is going well.” If you run the classic chart, make sure your midwives read its second stage that way.

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Check who can open it

The group opens for Doctor, Nurse Practitioner, Nurse and Midwife. Owners and managers see everything and are never restricted by role. Once the area is on, a Maternity checkbox also appears in Role navigation. Saving a role there replaces its shipped list with the boxes you ticked, so you can take the group away from a role that has it by default, or give it to one that does not — a records officer who runs the antenatal book, for example. Saving marks the role Custom, and Reset to default puts it back.

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Grant the acts

Maternity keeps its acts separate, and none of them is granted by a job title. An owner sets them per person.
1

Open the person's Permissions sheet

On Staff Members, open their row’s Actions menu and choose Permissions. The menu is rendered for the workspace owner only.
2

Find the Maternity group

It only appears while the Maternity care area is on — that is why the area comes first.
3

Switch on what the person does

4

Save

The button reads Save and start enforcing the first time and Save changes afterwards.
The first save takes effect immediately, mid-shift. Until someone is first saved in this sheet they are unrestricted and can do all of them. The moment you save, they can do only what is switched on — so set the switches before you save, and tell the person you have done it. See Permissions.
Change a confirmed due date is the one to be deliberate about. Re-dating moves every gestational age and every contact date that follows from it, across the worklist and every chart, so keep it with the people who do the dating scans. Sign a delivery record is the other. Signing closes the record to editing for good, so it belongs with whoever attests the birth — not with everyone who may write one up. It also governs retracting a signed delivery record, because unmaking an attestation takes the same authority as making one. Record a postnatal contact covers the mother’s check and her baby’s — one switch, deliberately, because they are the same act at the same bedside. It also covers correcting one.

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Check it worked

  • Maternity is in your sidebar, with Antenatal, Labour Ward and Postnatal under it.
  • Ask a midwife to look: they see the same group. Anyone outside the four clinical roles does not.
  • Today’s Clinic opens and reads No open pregnancy records — correct on a hospital that has not opened one yet.
  • Selecting Open a pregnancy record opens the sheet, and a record you open appears on the board with its gestation.
  • That record’s Contacts column reads 0 of … with the number of contacts in the schedule you chose — 0 of 8 on WHO 2016, 0 of 4 on Focused ANC.
  • A colleague you granted Open a pregnancy record sees that button at the top right of Today’s Clinic; one you did not, does not.
  • A colleague you granted Record an antenatal contact sees a Record contact button on a worklist row; one you did not, does not.
  • Open any labour chart: the badge beside Cervicograph names the chart you chose.

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If something goes wrong

Care areas exist on the Enterprise plan of the Clinic & Hospital edition only. See Plans and what they include.
“Only the clinic owner or a manager can change these.” Ask an owner.
Check their role first — the group opens for doctors, nurse practitioners, nurses and midwives — and then that role navigation is not excluding it for them. Compare against an owner’s sidebar: owners are never restricted by role, so if the owner sees it the difference is per-role.
The Maternity permission group only appears while the Maternity care area is on. Switch the area on first, then set the permissions.
Both appear on the Facility tab only while the Maternity care area is on. A setting for a hidden area would be a control that governs nothing.
Either you are not the owner — “Only the clinic owner can change this.” — or your own schedule has a problem, which is stated in red beneath the rows. Fix that and the button comes back. If there is no Save schedule button at all, the block could not read your setting — see below.
You are not the owner — the card says “Only the clinic owner can change this.” Ask an owner. If the save is refused after you select it, you are told Not saved with the reason: “You do not have permission to change this clinic’s settings.” If there is no Save partograph button at all, the block could not read your setting — see below.
If the setting itself cannot be fetched, the block does not guess. It shows This clinic’s antenatal schedule could not be read or This clinic’s partograph could not be read, and the form is not shown at all — no chart or schedule is named, and there is nothing to save. That is deliberate: saving from a card that never read your setting could replace a schedule or chart your hospital has already set with one you were never shown. Select Try again. If it keeps failing, check your connection and that you are still signed in to this hospital.
That is the change taking effect. The WHO Labour Care Guide (2020) draws neither line by design — WHO retired the fixed 1 cm/hour gradient in 2020. Switching back brings them straight to every chart again; no observation was altered either way.
That is the change taking effect, not a fault. The new windows are applied to every open pregnancy at once, and the warning before the save said so. Switching back returns the board to what it was — no record was altered either way.
Switching an area off removes it from navigation; a page somebody has bookmarked stays reachable, exactly as the screen says — “existing records stay accessible by direct link”. It is a menu, not a lock. Use permissions to stop the acts.

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Next

Maternity

How the three boards, the schedule and the charts fit together.

Today's Clinic

The board your midwives will work a session from.