Qualifications to Become a Midwife
Midwifery as a practice has been alive and well for centuries in Europe, though it was not formally recognized stateside until the 1920s, according to the American College of Nurse-Midwives. At its core, midwives or nurse-midwives offer expertise in pregnancy, birth and other women's-related issues. The ways in which you can become a midwife are almost as varied as the roles this professional takes on to help care, educate and promote wellness of women and their babies.
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Distinction
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You can either be a midwife or a nurse-midwife. According to KidsHealth.org, an arm of pediatric health system the Nemours Foundation, most midwives fall into the latter category. The difference between the two is that a midwife isn't a registered nurse, but she otherwise has the qualifications required to practice as a midwife. These qualifications, KidsHealth reports, include earning at least a bachelor's degree and completing nursing or midwifery training and state and national licensing tests. Under the "midwife" category you can also be a lay or direct-entry midwife, which means you aren't required to have a degree but you must complete other formal training, an apprenticeship, workshops or a combination of these, according to KidsHealth.
Midwife Certification
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Credentialing for midwives was approved in the early 1990s as a means of assuring that midwives had equivalent training to their nurse counterparts, according to the ACNM. A certified midwife may already be a physical therapist, doctor's assistant or another type of health professional. In this way, she demonstrates the medical proficiency and training necessary to be a midwife, according to the ACNM. Certified nurse-midwives or direct-entry midwives may also apply for another type of certification, the Certified Professional Midwife, which requires that the individual have out-of-hospital experience; the CPM usually goes on to practice in a home or birthing center setting. How this certification is viewed varies from state to state, according to KidsHealth.
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Education
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According to the ACNM's "Core Competencies for Basic Midwifery Practice," prospective midwives must take classes that cover fundamentals like normal growth and development, anatomy and physiology, nutrition, genetics, and sexual and behavioral development. You also need to take courses to develop an understanding of how to manage common skin, breathing, heart, mental, digestive and other types of health problems in women. These courses may be taken at colleges or universities offering either undergraduate or advanced degree programs in midwifery, as well as through distance learning programs, according to the Midwifery Education Accreditation Council.
Experience
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Clinical experience requirements differ by program and whether you are a prospective nurse-midwife or a prospective midwife. Generally speaking, lay midwives garner labor and delivery experience in a home or out-of-hospital setting, while certified nurse-midwives and midwives get the bulk of their hands-on experience in a hospital, reports industry advocacy organization Citizens for Midwifery. To be certified in the field, your practical skills are evaluated through hands-on tests as well as written ones, according to the North American Registry of Midwives.
Licensing
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Licensing requirements vary by state, by certification and by midwife "type," according to KidsHealth. To be certified as a nurse-midwife, you have to pass licensing tests at both the national and state level; as such, a CNM is licensed to practice in every state. That's not the case if you are a certified midwife; this certification is only recognized for licensing purposes in some states. Unlike CMs or CNMs, the direct-entry or lay midwife professional isn't regulated in some states. Some states don't allow such midwives to practice at all, while others give these midwives the flexibility to work without doctors (they usually practice in birthing centers or homes), according to KidsHealth.
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References
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