Historical and Current Roles of the Nurse Midwife
Historical and Current Roles of the Certified Nurse-Midwife Midwifery and home deliveries enjoyed a long and successful existence prior to the popularity of the medicalization and hospitalization of childbirth during the 1930s through the 1970s (Rooks, 1997). ... It will also review the state of current nurse-midwifery in America, focusing on the variety of roles certified nurse-midwives play today. Midwifery Before the First World War The earliest use of the term midwife, which means, literally, “to be ‘with woman’ during childbirth” (Monagle, n. ... During which time Louyse Bourgeois, midwife to the French royal family, taught of a “noninterfering approach to childbirth… [that recognizes] the importance of the mother’s emotional condition” (Rooks, 1997, p. ... The significant arrival of lower class immigrants, however, lowered the midwife’s public position. ... It seems that, following studies conducted in Australia and England--where it was found “that women wanted and opportunity to develop a relationship with, [and be cared for by] an individual midwife… not the pathology-oriented care prescribed by doctors” (Rooks, 1997, p. ... Internationally, a midwife’s scope of practice includes “the necessary supervision and care of women during pregnancy, labor, and the postpartum period [as well as adding] counseling and education, not only for the [women], but also within the family and community” (Monagle, n. ... Thus, as scholars state (Rooks, 1997; Sullivan, 2000; Varney, 1997), although a midwife’s primary focus should be the health and normalcy of a pregnancy, they do not limit her concerns, and she is free to address things that affect the health and normalcy of their clients (such as domestic violence, nutrition, and drug use). ... Its definition of the midwife which follows was developed in conjunction with the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics and adopted by ICM in 1972. ... A midwife is a person who… has successfully completed the prescribed course of studies in midwifery and has acquired the requisite qualifications to be registered and/or legally licensed to practise midwifery. ... (ICM, 1999) The United States: 1920-present Midwifery prior to the Women’s Movement of the 1970s The year 1925 saw the birth of nurse-midwifery in the United States with the founding of the Frontier Nursing Service by Mary Breckenridge, an English trained nurse-midwife (Monagle, n. ... Today’s nurse-midwife The American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM) was established in 1955 to “represent the needs and concerns of nurse-midwives, and to accredit educational programs” (Monagle, n.