We need your consent to:
- contact you
- access your medical records.
Families can choose how involved they want to be in our investigation.
You can give us your consent to access the relevant medical records but then choose not to be involved any further.
Once the family has consented to give us access to medical records, we can start our investigation and the family can then choose to remain involved (for example, taking part in an interview) when we’re further along in the investigation process.
Ideally, we prefer our investigations to start as soon as possible after an incident. We know that this is an incredibly difficult time for families, however, delaying the start of our investigation can reduce the quality of the evidence we gather.
Consent to contact
The NHS trust where you were treated will tell you about the Maternity and Newborn Safety Investigations (MNSI) programme.
They’ll ask for your agreement to share your contact details with us, so that we can get in touch with you. We aim to contact you within five working days of receiving confirmation that you have agreed to this.
When we first contact you, we’ll explain more about our investigation process.
Consent to access medical records
In cases where the family does not give their consent for MNSI to access medical records, then it’s unlikely MNSI could investigate and produce a report.
Responsibility then returns to the NHS trust to respond to the patient safety incident.