Hey everyone, Catherine here today to talk to you about what is a midwife. So I’ve gotten this question so many times and I wanted to do my best to answer your question. So in the United States, there are three different kinds of midwives. There’s: direct entry, midwives, nurse midwives, and traditional midwives.
The traditional midwives are less and less found today due to licensure in many, many states. Direct entry midwives are midwives that have gone through one of two processes. They have either gone to a midwifery school and done academics through midwifery school and then found a preceptor to apprentice under and learn from to do their hands on clinical skills. Or they have gone through something called the PEP process, P-E-P, which is phasing out. And that process is, a lot of self-study, self, self things, and then they take the same exam that you have to take when you go through, the direct entry route, which is called the NARM, North American Registry of Midwives.
There’s a NARM test that’s a seven hour test that both have to pass in order to be able to certify as a midwife. The pep process, applicants also have to do an apprenticeship and have to complete a certain amount of clinical hours to get their license to be able to sit for their licensing exam. The difference between direct entry midwives and nurse midwives, nurse midwives go to school for nursing first and then they master in midwifery, so that’s something that they do. And they also do clinical rotation and have to see birth in the hospital. They’re not seeing home births unless they have specifically tried to get that experience. So direct entry midwives are out of hospital midwives. They’re strictly working in the home birth setting or working in a birth center. There’s very few that can get in like hospital privileges and some of these more rural towns and stuff there’s the ability for some of this like congruent co-care happening, but for the most part that’s not happening. So yeah, so nurse midwives either they work in the hospital usually or they don’t. They either work in the hospital or they’re working in a birth center or homebirth. When they’re working in the hospital, they’re not autonomous care providers like direct entry midwives are. And then we have traditional midwives.
Traditional midwives are midwives that have been trained by another woman who had been a midwife, that kind of granny midwives that we know of in the south. They’re not trained in the medical interventions. They don’t have a license to carry medicine. As both certified nurse midwives, CNM and both CPM, certified professional midwives, have. So as a certified professional midwife, I’m able to carry all sorts of things when it comes to meds.
I’m able to carry IV fluids. I’m able to carry anti hemorrhagic drugs. I’m able to carry epinephrine, vitamin K for babies, antibiotics for mom in labor; all sorts of things that these traditional midwives are not able to carry. Now, traditional midwives have an incredible sense of knowledge of herbs and tinctures and positional things that a lot of midwives aren’t necessarily getting trained in today.
I believe that the direct entry midwife route is a beautiful blend between a certified nurse midwife in the medical world and a traditional midwife in that world, if that makes sense. So I hope this answers some of your questions on what is a midwife and the different kinds of midwives, and I can dive in a little bit more on the training that each of them go through in another video perhaps.