> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.clinikehr.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Maternity
> How the maternity module works — the antenatal clinic, the labour ward, the postnatal board, and where a pregnancy is read from booking to outcome.
export const StillStuck = ({topic}) =>
Still stuck{topic ? ` with ${topic}` : ''}?{' '}
Check Troubleshooting first —
it covers the failures we see most often. If that does not resolve it,{' '}
contact support and include
your workspace name and the time the problem happened, so we can find the
matching entry in your audit log.
;
export const Path = ({steps = []}) =>
{steps.map((s, i) =>
{i > 0 ?
›
: null}
{s}
)}
;
export const Availability = ({editions = ['all'], plans, roles, note}) => {
const list = editions.includes('all') ? ['clinic', 'pharmacy', 'lims'] : editions;
return
Available in
{list.map(e =>
{EDITION_LABELS[e] || e}
)}
{plans ? Plan : null}
{plans ? {plans} : null}
{roles ? Who : null}
{roles ? {roles} : null}
{note ? {note} : null}
;
};
Maternity in ClinikEHR runs on three boards. **Today's Clinic** is where a pregnancy record is opened, worked and closed; **Labour Ward** is where a woman goes once somebody starts her delivery record; **Postnatal** is where she and each baby go once that record carries a time of birth. Everything else is a way of reading what those three produced.
No board fills itself. A pregnancy appears on the first because somebody opened a record, on the second because somebody started a delivery record, and on the third because that record says when the baby was born — nothing is inferred from a gestation, a ward or an outcome.
## What is here today
| Screen | What it is for |
| ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| [Today's Clinic](/hospital/maternity/todays-clinic) | Every open pregnancy record, with the contact each is due |
| [Open, re-date and close a pregnancy record](/hospital/maternity/pregnancy-records) | The three acts that bracket a pregnancy |
| [Record an antenatal contact](/hospital/maternity/record-a-contact) | Vitals, obstetric findings and a referral, in one sheet |
| [The antenatal card](/hospital/maternity/antenatal-card) | One pregnancy read over time — every contact in sequence |
| [Programme doses](/hospital/maternity/programme-doses) | IPTp, tetanus and iron-folate against a pregnancy |
| [Antenatal Register](/hospital/maternity/register) | Pregnancies that have been closed, with their outcome |
| [Antenatal Coverage](/hospital/maternity/coverage) | ANC1, ANC4+, ANC8+, IPTp and tetanus coverage, plus the caesarean and stillbirth rates, by month booked |
| [Labour Ward](/hospital/maternity/labour-ward) | Who is labouring, for how long, and who is expected |
| [The labour record](/hospital/maternity/labour-record) | One labour — the delivery record, from draft to signed |
| [The labour chart](/hospital/maternity/labour-chart) | The cervicograph and the observation matrix |
| [Babies and birth records](/hospital/maternity/babies) | Each baby born, and registering a live birth as a patient |
| [Postnatal](/hospital/maternity/postnatal) | The four WHO postnatal contacts, for the mother and for each baby |
| [Retract a delivery or birth record](/hospital/maternity/retract-a-record) | Marking a record entered in error, and what that moves |
| [The pregnancy on the chart](/hospital/maternity/pregnancy-on-the-chart) | What a clinician sees while the woman is in front of them |
| [The Maternity tab on a ward chart](/hospital/maternity/ward-maternity-tab) | Charting a labour from the bedside, and what the tab says before anybody has |
The module covers a pregnancy from booking, through labour, to each baby born and registered, and on to the six-week postnatal check.
## The postnatal side is built from the delivery
**Postnatal** takes its list from the delivery record, not from a birth outcome — so a woman has a row whatever happened, and a stillborn baby is still listed beside her with a line saying where her mother's care is recorded instead. The WHO schedule is four contacts: **within 24 hours**, **day 3**, **day 7–14** and **week 6**, counted from the birth, over a board that looks back 90 days and says so on screen.
Two consequences are worth knowing before anybody works it:
* **A baby is identified by her birth record, so postnatal care never waits on registration.** The first contact is due within 24 hours and nobody has done the paperwork by then. **Not registered yet** is context on the row, never a block.
* **The Edinburgh score is recorded as scored and is not interpreted.** No band, no threshold, no colour and no referral is derived from it, here or anywhere downstream. If the score means she needs to be seen, **Refer to a clinician** on the contact is what carries that forward.
## Nothing deletes; a wrong record is retracted
A pregnancy record, a programme dose, an antenatal contact, a delivery record, a birth record and a postnatal contact can each be marked **entered in error**, with a reason. The row stays on file, read-only, and stops counting — which is also what frees its position for the corrected one.
Retraction is refused, never cascaded, while anything is filed underneath: a delivery with live birth records against it will not retract until each is, and a birth with postnatal contacts against it will not either. And **a registered baby keeps their patient record** — retracting a birth never touches the child's chart or the mother's guardian link. See [Retract a delivery or birth record](/hospital/maternity/retract-a-record).
## Gestation is worked out, never typed
Nobody records a gestational age anywhere in ClinikEHR. A pregnancy record carries a due date, and every **28+3** you read — on the worklist, on the antenatal card, on the chart header, in the storyboard, on the **Pregnancy** tab — is worked out from that due date at the moment you look at it.
That has two consequences worth knowing:
* **Every screen agrees.** There is no second copy of the number to drift out of date, and a screen left open overnight recalculates rather than showing yesterday's week.
* **Correcting the due date corrects the history with it.** If a dating scan moves the due date, the record then reads as though she had always been dated that way — including the gestation shown against contacts recorded weeks earlier. What the previous date was, and why it changed, is kept and shown on both the [antenatal card](/hospital/maternity/antenatal-card) and the chart.
Where the dating on a record cannot be used, screens say **Dating unavailable** rather than leaving the space blank. A blank reads as "not pregnant"; the words read as "we cannot work this out", which is what is true.
## When a contact falls due
Contacts are scheduled against gestation, not against the calendar, so a re-dating moves them all together.
Which schedule your hospital runs is an owner's decision under **Settings → Facility → Antenatal contact schedule**, and there are three answers — see [Set up antenatal care](/hospital/get-started/maternity-setup).
**WHO 2016 — eight contacts** is where every hospital starts:
| Contact | Window (completed weeks) |
| ------------------------- | ------------------------ |
| 1 — Booking (by 12 weeks) | up to 12 |
| 2 — 20 weeks | 18 to 22 |
| 3 — 26 weeks | 24 to 28 |
| 4 — 30 weeks | 29 to 31 |
| 5 — 34 weeks | 32 to 35 |
| 6 — 36 weeks | 36 to 37 |
| 7 — 38 weeks | 38 to 39 |
| 8 — 40 weeks | 40 to 42 |
**Focused ANC — four visits** is the older model, still in use at many sites: booking by 12 weeks, then 24–26, 30–32 and 36–38. **This hospital's own schedule** is a list you author yourself, one window at a time.
A pregnancy is **Due** once the next window has opened, **Overdue** once it has closed with nothing recorded, and **Schedule complete** once the schedule's last contact is on the record.
**The schedule is applied when a board is read, not when a record is written.** Nothing is stored against a pregnancy about which schedule it was booked under, so changing the schedule changes **who counts as Due or Overdue on every open pregnancy at once** — including women booked months ago. No record is altered; the question is simply asked again with different windows.
**Contacts are counted, not matched to slots.** A woman who attends twice in the second trimester has had two contacts, whatever the schedule intended them to be. That is deliberate: matching each visit to a numbered slot would invent a precision the record does not have.
## Which labour chart you run
The [labour chart](/hospital/maternity/labour-chart) is the other owner's decision, under **Settings → Facility → Partograph**. Two systems ship, and they judge differently on purpose:
| | **WHO Labour Care Guide (2020)** | **Classic partograph (alert and action lines)** |
| ---------------------- | -------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------- |
| Active phase from | 5 cm | 4 cm |
| Alert and action lines | Not drawn | Drawn |
| Fetal heart rate | 110–160 bpm | 120–160 bpm |
| After full dilatation | Still assessed | Nothing assessed |
Every hospital starts on the **WHO Labour Care Guide (2020)**. Like the contact schedule, the choice is applied when a chart is read rather than when an observation is written — so changing it changes what the chart says about a labour already in progress, without altering a single observation. See [Choose your labour chart](/hospital/get-started/maternity-setup).
## Who can do what
Role decides whether the **Maternity** group opens at all. Permission decides what may be done inside it.
| Action | Who by default | Permission |
| ------------------------------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Open **Today's Clinic** and the **Antenatal Register** | Doctor, Nurse Practitioner, Nurse, Midwife — plus owners and managers | Nothing; the screens have no check of their own |
| Record an antenatal contact | Anyone not yet governed; otherwise only if switched on | **Record an antenatal contact** |
| Open a pregnancy record | Anyone not yet governed; otherwise only if switched on | **Open a pregnancy record** |
| Change a confirmed due date | Anyone not yet governed; otherwise only if switched on | **Change a confirmed due date** |
| Close a pregnancy record | Anyone not yet governed; otherwise only if switched on | **Close a pregnancy record** |
| Start and write up a delivery record | Anyone not yet governed; otherwise only if switched on | **Record a delivery** |
| Sign a delivery record | Anyone not yet governed; otherwise only if switched on | **Sign a delivery record** |
| Register a newborn as a patient | Anyone not yet governed; otherwise only if switched on | **Register a newborn as a patient** |
| Retract a delivery or birth record | Anyone not yet governed; otherwise only if switched on — a **signed** delivery needs signing authority too | **Record a delivery** |
| Record or correct a programme dose | Anyone not yet governed; otherwise only if switched on | **Record a programme dose** |
| Record, amend or retract a postnatal contact | Anyone not yet governed; otherwise only if switched on | **Record a postnatal contact** |
| Book a theatre case from the labour board | Anyone not yet governed; otherwise only if switched on | **Book and reschedule cases** — a **Theatre** switch, not a maternity one |
Two behaviours surprise people. Enforcement is **opt-in per person** — a colleague who has never been saved in the permissions sheet is unrestricted and can do all of these, and the sheet warns **"Saving starts enforcing"**. Once they have been saved, the maternity switches start off, so grant them deliberately. And a **denied action is recorded** in the audit log while an allowed one is not, so an owner can tell "nobody tried" from "somebody was blocked". See [Permissions](/platform/team/permissions).
The **Maternity** permission group only appears in the sheet while the **Maternity** care area is on. Switch the area on first — [Set up antenatal care](/hospital/get-started/maternity-setup).
## The module records; it does not decide
Nothing in this module decides anything for you. A fundal height, a fetal heart rate, a dipstick result and a danger sign are recorded as they were found and shown as they were recorded — there are no traffic lights, no automatic escalation, and no alert raised on your behalf.
The [antenatal card](/hospital/maternity/antenatal-card) and the [labour chart](/hospital/maternity/labour-chart) do name flags where a finding meets a threshold, with the values that fired them attached, and both state beside them that they do not replace your assessment. Nothing acts on them, escalates them or tells anybody.
And silence is never a reassurance. When nothing is flagged, that means nothing recorded met a rule — not that she is well, and not that anybody took an observation. A measurement nobody took cannot say anything at all.