Helping people make informed decisions about their maternity care

Devon MNVP believes that better understanding of people’s needs and giving people more choice and control in their maternity care will lead to happier births. Empowering women, birthing people, and those around them, to make decisions that are right for them is central to delivering good practice in maternity care, so we worked with maternity staff to raise awareness of ‘informed consent’.

People are not always given the information they need

‘Informed consent’ is a hugely important issue for the service users we speak to. Sadly, we regularly receive feedback about people feeling pushed into decisions about without the right information they need to feel comfortable.

The maternity staff we meet tell us they believe personalised care, including informed consent, is vital to good practice in maternity care.

Raising awareness to help people make the right choice for them

Our Vice Chair for the Royal Devon University NHS Foundation Trust East worked with maternity staff to produce an infographic to help explain ‘informed consent’ to service users. The poster has been a real success and has been adopted and displayed across Devon. We also received great feedback nationally with other MNVPs around the country wishing to adopt it with in their Trusts.

For more information

View the DMNVP poster explaining informed consent.