Women carrying their own case notes improves their sense of control and satisfaction and the availability of antenatal records, but insufficient evidence of additional effects.
In some healthcare systems women are given their own case notes to look after and bring to each antenatal visit. This review of three trials, involving 675 women, suggests that there are both potential benefits (increased availability of antenatal records during hospital attendance, increased maternal control and satisfaction during pregnancy) and harms (more operative deliveries). All the trials reported that more women in the case notes group would prefer to hold their antenatal records in another pregnancy, but there was not enough evidence to determine the effect of women carrying their own case notes on health behaviours such as smoking and breastfeeding and clinical outcomes.