About This Role
Providing care to mothers and babies throughout the maternity cycle is the core responsibility of the Nurse-Midwife. This role involves managing routine pregnancy cases and offering gynecological care under medical direction, ensuring comprehensive support for patients during antepartum, intrapartum, postpartum, and neonatal phases.
Responsibilities
- Review the patient's chart and search for abnormalities that would indicate anything other than a normal birth.
- Obtain the patient's medical history and perform an evaluative obstetrical examination, including taking vital signs, checking neurological reflexes, listening to fetal heartbeat, taking external measurements of the uterus, locating the position of the fetus, and estimating its size and weight.
- Perform internal pelvic examinations to determine the extent of dilation, station, and position of the fetus and general condition of the membranes.
- Interpret the results of each element of the obstetrical examination and determine whether consultation with a physician is indicated.
- Draw blood and complete routine laboratory request forms.
- Perform hematocrit analysis by centrifuging a blood sample, examining it with a microscope, and recording the results for review by a physician.
- Manage the patient during labor, starting IVs, administering medications, prepping the patient, instructing the patient in labor procedures, and maintaining surveillance of progress in labor.
- Notify a physician and transfer the patient to the delivery room when indications of impending delivery arise.
- Assist the patient in the delivery room by providing emotional support and performing delivery procedures, including pudendal block, episiotomy, and repairs and resuscitation of the newborn.
- Make periodic postpartum visits to the mother and baby to evaluate condition and progress and instruct the mother in recuperative procedures and baby care.
- Participate in the informal training of nurses and students and the refresher program for nurse-midwives.
- Provide gynecological care to healthy women under medical direction, including performing pelvic examinations to screen for cancer and other abnormalities.
- Provide direct family planning services such as fitting diaphragms and intrauterine devices and dispensing oral contraceptives.
- Counsel and provide referrals regarding family planning.
Requirements
- A current and active license to practice as a Registered Nurse issued by the California Board of Registered Nursing.
- A current and active certificate to practice as a Nurse-Midwife issued by the California Board of Registered Nursing.
- Current Basic Life Support (BLS) for Healthcare Providers (CPR & AED) Program certification issued by the American Heart Association.
