For Immediate Release | Contact: | Shawn Farley |
August 4, 2003 | (202) 728-9876 | |
sfarley@acnm.org |
Nurse-Midwives
Provide Safe, Patient-Centered, Maternity Care
The
two and a half year prospective cohort study, funded by the US Agency for
Health Care Research and Quality, utilizing concurrent comparison groups
totaling 2,957 women, revealed that mothers receiving collaborative/birth
center/midwifery care:
The
study also revealed similar morbidity, preterm birth, and low-birth weight
rates among women receiving collaborative midwifery care and those who saw only
physicians.
According
to the researchers, “Because these resources and procedures are major
determinants of the cost of perinatal care, managed care organizations, state
and local governments, and obstetric providers should consider inclusion of
collaborative management/birth center programs in their array of covered or
offered services.”
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
women’s 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. “If you truly care about what is good for women and our nation’s
economy we cannot afford to provide intensive medical intervention to women who
don’t need it, while truly high risk women go without the care they deserve”
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.”
The
number of nurse-midwife attended births has doubled in the past five years, now
totaling over 10 percent of vaginal births nationwide. Nurse-midwives are fully licensed in every
state, and have prescriptive authority in 48 of the 50 states.
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.
Debra J. Jackson, Janet M. Lang, William H. Swartz,
Theodore G. Ganiats, Judith Fullerton, Jeffrey Ecker, and Uyensa Nguyen. (June
2003). Outcomes, Safety, and Resource Utilization in a Collaborative