Admit a Mother to the Labour Ward

Who / when: the midwife, the moment a mother in labour arrives on the labour ward and needs to be admitted. This is the step that opens her labour episode: it puts her on the live ward list, ties up a bed, and — most importantly — creates an admission that hangs off the shared clinical spine (the single underlying encounter and admission record that the chart, orders, billing and every other module all read from). Because it’s on the spine, everything you do from here — plotting her partograph, recording the delivery, registering the baby — attaches to the same thread, with no re-keying of who she is.

We’ll follow Sister Adaeze, a midwife admitting a labouring mother.

1. Midwife — open Maternity → Labour Ward. This is the live list of mothers currently admitted in labour; admitting a new mother adds her here.
2. Midwife — select “Admit to labour” to open the admission form.
3. Midwife — pick the mother from the searchable patient picker (search by name or UHID — her Unique Health ID, the permanent VNA-… number minted at registration). Choosing an existing patient is what links the labour admission to her one shared record.
4. Midwife — choose a free bed on the labour ward, then record the labour details: the gestation (how many weeks pregnant she is), the stage of labour, and her risk assessment.
5. Midwife — submit the admission. Veona mints a labour admission (its reference begins LAB-), and the mother appears immediately on the Maternity → Labour Ward list.

Note

The labour admission isn’t a stand-alone note — it’s created on the shared clinical spine, linked to the same encounter and admission record the rest of Veona uses. That’s why her partograph, her delivery record and her newborn’s registration all line up under one patient and one episode of care, automatically, without anyone re-entering her identity at each step.

Tip

The mother must already be a registered patient with a UHID before you can admit her — the patient picker only finds existing records. If she has somehow never been registered, register her first (the front desk does this on Register → New Registration), then come back and admit her.

What happens next

With the mother admitted and on the labour ward list, her labour episode is open and ready to chart. The natural next step is to start plotting her labour progress against time — carry her through Plot Labour Progress on a Partograph. When the baby arrives you’ll record the delivery and then register the newborn as a patient in her own right (Register a Newborn as a New Patient) — and because both attach to the same shared spine as this admission, the family’s records stay joined up from labour through to the nursery.

Follow the trail

• Previous: Record Antenatal Care Visits
• Next: Plot Labour Progress on a Partograph
• Related: Register a Newborn as a New Patient