Nurse-midwifery

“It blended the practices of nursing and midwifery during the Progressive Era campaign to eliminate traditional African-American and immigrant midwives, decrease the role of general practitioners in births, and replace both with obstetrician-gynecologists. Public health nurses and social reformers first denounced midwives as ignorant and dangerous and then proposed educating nurses in midwifery because, as nurses, they would maintain asepsis and seek obstetrical consultation more effectively than traditional midwives or general practitioners, while meeting the needs of women who either had no access to physician care or preferred midwives because of cultural tradition” (Dawley, 149). After brief period (1944-1952), when nurse-midwifery was a section of the National Org. of Publish Health Nursing, the nurse-midwives formed their own American College of Nurse-Midwifery, which first met in 1955 (151). . . . Over time these changes [more in clinical practice; more state regulation as nurse practitioners from 60s on] intensified division in primary professional identity between those who thought of themselves as midwives with a background in nursing and those who identified as nurses who also had an education in midwifery. In terms of practice there were two distinct groups – those who practiced clinical nurse-midwifery and those who used their midwifery to improve maternity care for women while working in traditional nursing roles. (153). Even though Carolyn Conant van Blarcom, Clara Noyes, and Mary Breckinridge accepted the English title “Certified Midwife” when arguing for educating American nurses in midwifery, “almost from the beginning,[American] nurses who were educated in midwifery preferred the title ‘nurse-midwife’” (154), Debate over professional identity reopened in 1972, when assignment of writing regulations for new nurse-midwife act fell to State Dept. of Health Office of Nursing Manpower, albeit naming ACNM certification as qualification for nurse-midwife licensure (156ff. ).