Nurse Midwife
A nurse midwife is an advanced practice nurse with additional training on delivering babies and providing prenatal and postpartum care to women.
Nature of the Work
Nurse midwives are very involved in labor and delivery, sometimes never leaving the mother during the entire labor process. They are trained to recognize signs and symptoms that deviate from normal conditions, and depending on criticality of situation, consult the doctor who may become involved in the delivery of baby, if required.
Although qualified to administer drugs and to perform medical procedures, these are not routine works for nurse midwives, unless so requested by the mother and ones that have doctor’s prior approval.
Most nurse midwives deliver babies in hospitals as well as in homes. They also provide both prenatal and postpartum care for both mothers and newborns. In addition, nurse midwives are often called upon to provide family planning and birth control counseling, and also normal gynecological services such as physical and breast exams, pap smears, and preventive health screening. In most states, it is normal for nurse midwives to also prescribe medications.
Working Conditions
Certified nurse midwife works in hospitals, clinics, birthing centers, health departments, private practices, institutions, and with physicians. Depending on experience, one may even practice on her/his own. According to a recent Journal of Nurse-Midwifery survey, more than half of CNMs practice in an office or a clinic setting. Again, most CNMs have listed hospitals or physicians as their employers.
Since a nurse midwife is fully engaged during delivery of baby, she never leaves her place from beside the mother starting from labor pain to actual delivery and necessary care thereafter of both mother and child. A nurse midwife therefore has to be well-conversant in prenatal and postpartum care to mothers.
Employment
While confirmed statistics are hard to come by, it is generally acknowledged that more and more would-be mothers prefer the assuring presence of nurse midwives during child-delivery and for both prenatal and postpartum care. A study shows that the number of women in US, whose babies are delivered by nurse midwives, have increased more than 12-fold between 1975 and 2002. In 2002, certified nurse midwives are said to have delivered more than 7 percent of the babies born in the entire country and attended more than 10 percent of vaginal deliveries (not including forceps and vacuum-assisted births). All of these go to indicate that midwives are increasingly becoming an appealing option for women who prefer a more individualized and less routine approach to childbirth than many traditional obstetricians provide.
Training, Other Qualifications, and Advancement
Being a Registered Nurse (RN) is a requirement to become a certified nurse-midwife (CNM), not a certified midwife (CM). If a high school student decides to become a CNM, a 4-year university program is recommended that awards a bachelor's of science in nursing (BSN) degree, after which application may be made to a nurse-midwifery education program.
A high school graduate who does not have a baccalaureate degree in any field but wants to become a CNM, may also enroll in a university program that awards a BSN degree and then apply to a nurse-midwifery education program.
A baccalaureate degree holder in a field other than nursing, and is not an RN yet, wanting to become a CNM, may contact the nurse-midwifery program(s) of interest for attending and ask what their specific admissions requirements are for non-nurses. Generally, one of three routes is to be followed:
- Graduate from a 4-year university program that awards a BSN and apply to the nurse-midwifery education program;
- Graduate from a community college program that awards an associates degree in nursing (AND) and apply to the nurse-midwifery education program;
- Graduate from a university nursing program that is accelerated or compressed into one to one and a half years and apply to the nurse-midwifery education program. This option is available at some universities that also have a nurse-midwifery education program (and are sometimes referred to as 3-year nurse-midwifery education programs).
If you are an RN who does not have a BSN or a baccalaureate degree in another field, you need to either have a baccalaureate degree before admission or catch hold of a program that awards no less than a baccalaureate degree upon becoming a graduate.
Students who live beyond 100 miles from a school may opt for distance learning programs, where course attendance is usually through videoconferencing, the World Wide Web, telephone, and fax. Few on-campus visits are also required. For distance-learning students, reading materials assigned are textbooks, online information, and publications available through libraries and direct mailings.
Clinical work is conducted near the student's location with certified nurse midwives (CNMs), who are pre-approved by the college.
Job Outlook
Nurse midwife works in a variety of settings including private practices, hospitals, birth centers, health clinics, and home birth services. Scope of ready jobs and numbers and types of opportunities available to new graduates often depend on an individual's work preference and vary across the country and across the locales (urban or rural). As such, certified nurse midwives are relatively new entrants in the nation’s workforce. So reliable information on the types of settings they practice in is not yet available. Be that as it may, the outlook for professional opportunities for nurse midwife is positive, in keeping with the overall increasing demand of other nursing professions.
Earnings
According to the Career Center University of Missouri, "Beginning CNMs can earn between $35,000 and $40,000 per year. Average income ranges from $41,500 to $52,000 a year. Top earning possibilities could be anywhere from $50- $65,000 per year."
Incomes vary greatly depending on years and type of experience, the area of the country you work in, benefit packages, and employment of each CNM, such as whether a nurse midwife works within an institution or practices on his or her own.
Other factors influencing salary of nurse midwife include type of practice setting (private practice, hospital, birth center, home birth, health clinic), geographic location, type of location (urban or rural), benefits packages offered with salary, hours worked per week, and type of on-job-care provided (for example, full-scope of women's health services, pre-natal care, gynecologic care, etc.).
