Certified Nurse Midwife
A certified nurse midwife (CNM) provides expert prenatal and postpartum care to women. She provides women’s health care, focusing on her labor and delivery of babies as well as gynaecological and maternity care.
Nurse midwives have existed since the 1920’s and in 1955 American College Nurse Midwives (ACNM) is formed to oversee the development of the field. Nurse midwives receive education and training in nursing and midwifery and must be licensed. The requirements for certification are:
1) Completion of an accredited nursing program
2) Ensure to possess a license as a registered nurse and
3) Satisfactory completion of a nurse midwife program from an accredited institute
Once a prospective candidate meets these requirements, he or she can take the national certification examination administered by the ACNM Certification Council, after which the candidate receives the nurse midwife certification.
A certified nurse midwife stays with the soon-to-be mother as she goes through the labor and delivery process, looking for signs of complications or any other factors that might require a physician’s intervention. Before a labor, a certified nurse midwife talks to women about their birth options from natural delivery to medical procedures that can assist in delivering a healthy baby depending on the pregnant woman’s circumstances.
The key to a certified nurse midwife’s job is education, talking to women about their health issues, what happens during labor and delivery, what might be potential risks, how to breast feed and take care of the new born baby infant and other such related.
