The North American Registry of Midwives (NARM) has created a competence and experience-based accreditation process to evaluate direct-entry midwives from diverse educational backgrounds. More than 500 midwives have been credentialled as Certified Professional Midwives (CPM) over the last five years. To document the care provided by CPMs, we undertook a prospective study to attempt to collect clinical and birth outcome data from all practicing CPMs for the year 2000. CPMs sent registration logs to us every three months listing all clients booked to date for expected delivery in the year 2000 and for whom they provided continuity of care through pregnancy, labor and postpartum. A detailed dataform was submitted for each client after 6 weeks postpartum. Client consent forms allowed us to directly contact the clients after care to study client satisfaction, validate birth outcomes and follow up on clients who left care.
Over 400 CPMs registered more than 6,000 clients for the year 2000. We will present final results at the conference. Based on data from the first 700 clients, 78% of women intended to deliver at home and 13% in a birth center. Ten percent of women were transferred to hospital during or after labor, including 3.5% after the first assessment of labor. Episiotomy was performed in 2.1% of births, forceps 0.3%, vacuum extraction 1.0% and Cesarean Section 5.4%.
CPM2000 will provide detailed evidence that should help facilitate clients, health maintenance organizations, insurers, and governing bodies to make informed decisions about the use of CPMs as health care providers.
Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the session , the participant in this session will be able to: 1 Discuss the results of the study including the population served, transfers to hospital, intervention rates and birth outcomes. 2 Articulate the aspects of the design that make the study strong epidemiologically. 3 List three potential uses of the study and how midwifery-specific issues will be addressed
Keywords: Maternal and Child Health, Pregnancy Outcomes
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.