Nurse-Midwives Provide Safe, Patient-Centered, Maternity Care

A recent study published in the June 2003 edition of American Journal of Public Health documents that low-risk patients receiving collaborative midwifery care had birth success rates comparable to those who saw only physicians, with fewer interventions, more options, and lower cost to the health care system.

Washington, DC -- A recent study published in the June 2003 edition of American Journal of Public Health documents that low-risk patients receiving collaborative midwifery care had birth success rates comparable to those who saw only physicians, with fewer interventions, more options, and lower cost to the health care system.

The prospective study, funded by the US Agency for Health Care Research and Quality, revealed that mothers receiving collaborative/birth center/midwifery care spent less time in the birth facility/hospital, experienced fewer cesarean or assisted vaginal births, fewer episiotomies, and fewer technical interventions while maintaining comparable birth success rates.

ACNM Executive Director Deanne Williams, CNM, MS praised the study as yet another well-conducted, factual, validation of midwifery care as a modern, safe, and cost-effective womens health care option. This study documents what we and many other countries have known for a long time. Nurse-midwives, working in collaboration with physicians, should be caring for the majority of pregnant women in this country and must be supported in their commitment to practice midwifery, not medicine," said Williams.

The midwifery standard of care emphasizes research evidence and meeting the medical and emotional needs of women and their families. Midwives are less likely to induce labor or perform episiotomies and believe that cesarean sections should only be performed for medical indications. Midwives encourage women to walk during labor, use birthing balls, take showers or tub baths, all of which safely help manage pain.

The study also showed that collaborative midwifery care used fewer hospital resources, resulting in lower cost to the health care system, with rates of morbidity, preterm delivery, and low-birth weight that compared favorably to the physicians-only group.

Researchers concluded, Our study suggests that a collaborative care model and the traditional, physician-based, perinatal care model are different health care service routes to a common end point: safe outcomes for mother and infants."

For more information on birth centers visit www.birthcenters.org. To arrange an interview with a local ACNM member contact Shawn Farley at 202-728-9876 or sfarley@acnm.org.