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Midwife Objectives

Midwifery is a profession that has existed for centuries, but in the early 1900s, their role in society was eclipsed by the emergence of large hospitals. As medical professions became more specialized and society replaced house visits with hospital appointments, midwives were fairly rare in most of the 20th century. However, midwifery has regained popularity in the past two decades in reaction to many women perceiving hospital births as cold and impersonal.

  1. Midwife Responsibilities

    • Most midwives are sought for prenatal care and child delivery. After the child's birth, the midwife typically observes the infant for its first four weeks. Midwives also confer the entire breadth of women's healthcare (OB-GYN), including services for female adolescents and post-menopausal women. Midwives may perform cancer screening and dispense contraception. Some midwives will even perform exams and procedures on a patient's male partner if such procedures are germane to the women's health.

    Advantages of Hiring a Midwife

    • In many cases, hiring a midwife to perform duties normally associated with doctors or hospital visits is significantly less expensive. Midwives are often able to keep their rates low by minimizing operational costs and avoiding doctor oversight. Regardless of cost, many women feel more comfortable with midwife care because they regard it as more natural less impersonal. To accommodate this objective, midwife services are possible in many settings. These include the patient's home, private clinics, hospital offices and public clinics.

    Midwife Certifications

    • As a licensed profession, midwife practitioners fall into two categories: certified midwives (CMs) and certified nurse-midwives (CNMs.) The American Midwifery Certification Board (AMCB) issues the standards and licenses for these careers. CMs receive training through accredited independent programs. CNMs study midwifery as graduate-level coursework after earning their nursing degrees. CNMs have considerably more medical privileges than CMs. Unlike CMs, CNMs are allowed to prescribe certain medications and their services can be billed to health insurance.

    Special Considerations

    • Some medical professionals discourage home delivery with a midwife because of the risk of complications. Complications that might be minor in a hospital could be fatal at home, they argue. Additionally, some states restrict CM licensing. Unlike CNMs, many states have made it illegal for CNs to perform home births, and some CNs have been prosecuted for assisting home deliveries. Midwifery proponents counter that fatal complications are rare, and childbirth should not be treated like a medical malady.

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