Midwifery practice and professional development

Midwifery: Practice and Standardization in the United States

Midwifery is a centuries old practice wherein individuals -- almost exclusively women -- trained in healing practices and knowledge of a woman's body and its various phases and iterations assist women before, during, and after pregnancy. The practices of midwifery can include fertility counseling to pregnancy assistance and comfort increasing to assistance with the birthing process and even childcare and rearing practices. This quite obviously makes midwifery a very valuable practice, and midwives a very valuable resource; their area of specialization allows them to adeptly and efficiently assist women through childbirth and beyond, providing services in a manner more personal and more complete than traditional medical practitioners can provide. There has been a recent resurgence of interest in midwifery in the general public, probably in response to these benefits.

There is still something of a resistance amongst some in the medical industry, however, in accepting midwifery as a viable and valuable practice and profession. This is probably due in large part to the lack of consistency of understandings and applications of midwifery, amongst populations of the general public, other medical practitioners, and even midwives themselves (Kennedy et al. 2003). This lack of standardization and the history of midwifery as a natural and holistic practice for many centuries has led to some severe misconceptions about midwifery, such as a belief that midwifery practices are not empirically valid, that they are based wholly on spiritual, religious, and/or pseudo-scientific beliefs, and that the sole role of a midwife is as an emotional support or "coach" for the birthing process. Though there is often a highly spiritual element to the practice of midwifery, this does not empirically invalid midwife practices, and indeed it more closely aligns them with modern nursing practice.

The only real issue facing the practice and acceptance of midwifery in the United States is the lack of standardization. Widely varying conceptions of proper midwife practices and expectations exist in the literature and among practitioners and institutions, making licensing and the validation of midwives and bodies of midwifery knowledge very difficult (Kennedy et al. 2003). Without this standardization and the validation capabilities that it leads to, it will be highly difficult for the midwifery professionals to be accepted by the medical community as the truly valuable resources they are. Many other countries have already adopted standardizations for midwifery practice, and if the United States were to follow suit it would be a giant bon to the practice of midwifery both domestically and internationally, raising awareness of midwifery practices and benefits in the general public and establishing higher quality and more stringent standards for midwife professionals.