Certified Midwife Nurse as a Profession: An Overview

Certified Midwife Nurse As A Profession: An Overview

Healthcare as a whole has contributed immensely due to its multi-faceted nature to the introduction of different career paths to the medical profession. One such inclusion is Nurse Midwife.  

 A midwife is defined as a person who assists women in childbirth. A midwife is highly necessary in order to complete the prescribed course of studies in midwifery and to acquire the necessary training to be registered and or legally licensed to practice midwifery.

  The contribution of Midwife nurses in the medical profession is an enormous part of which is the provision of essential supervision, care, and advice to women during pregnancy, labor, and the postpartum period. She is also responsible to conduct a delivery as well as total care for the newly born baby. All nurse-midwifery programs are within institutions of higher education as a result of the complexities of the task associated with the profession. 

 Roughly over 70% of nurse-midwives who graduate college are at the Master's degree level. In America, programs for midwifery are accredited by the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM) in order to make graduates qualified to take the national certification examination. In order to be allowed to practice midwifery, you must be a qualified and registered nurse with at least two years of experience before you apply for nurse-midwife programs.

 It is essential for a midwife to provide an extensive range of healthcare services to women and their newly born babies. Midwife duties include ordering appropriate laboratory tests, carrying out physical assessments, history taking, and coordinating other procedural activities. Their functions also include counseling patients on health promotion and risk reduction activities. 

 The majority of nurse-midwife practice focuses on childbirth and gynecological care as well as family planning. The services listed above are carried out in total cooperation with the clients/patients. Midwives also perform prescriptive privileges, which is similar to nurse practitioners. It is however noted that the categories of work performed by midwives vary from one state to another. Nurse-midwives work in collaboration with OB/GYN doctors when it comes to situations like high-risk pregnancies or other scenarios that are outside of the midwives' capabilities.

 As peculiar to other professions, certified nurse midwives are regulated at two different levels. These are Licensure and Certification.

 

Licensure is known to be the procedure at the state level in accordance with specific state laws and this varies from one state to another. 

 While Certification on its own is the recognition given by the national organization based on the standards and procedures for the professional practice known to be the same across the country. In many states and locales, a master’s degree is highly needed for national certification. 

 While some States stipulated that you have to be nationally certified before you can get your license. For example, only graduates of nurse-midwifery programs accredited by the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM) are qualified to take the certification examination.