Nursing & Midwifes Case

Nursing & Midwifes

[Name of the Writer]

[Name of the Institution]

Nursing & Midwifes

Introduction

Advanced practice nursing is playing a very important and instrumental role in this complex global health care industry. Advanced practice nursing offers new innovative ways to provide cost efficient health care solutions. Patients now have access to these qualified practitioners for their health care problems. They also provide health care to people who do not have access to high quality health services. There are different specialties one can choose from in becoming an advanced practice nurse. We will discuss one such specialty, nurse-midwifery, and discuss various issues related with it.

Regulations

Nurse-midwifery is a specialization in which a person has both specialized education in nursing and midwifery. There primary role is to provide healthcare for patients and assist women for both during and after the pregnancy period.

Certified nurse-midwives (CRMs) are currently regulated at two levels. Some specific laws of the state governs the licensing of certifies nurse midwives. These licensing requirements do vary from one state to the other to an extent. The common practice for the licensing is to complete either a master's degree in nursing and midwifery or some related national certification.

United Kingdom set up a central council for nursing, midwifery and health visiting in 1980's. Along with the set up, new regulations were formed. In accordance with the regulations, the main and foremost functions of the council include maintaining a record of UK nurses, midwives and health visitors, handle professional misconduct complaints and provide guidance for registrants (Davies and Beach, 1999). At the same time, other regulations were introduced whose main role was to observe the quality of nursing and midwifery academic courses. Other roles of these regulations also included to maintain training records of people who were enrolled in such academic courses. These regulations had a positive impact on the role of nurse midwifery as a profession.

Proposals

There are proposals currently underway regarding the implementation of continued professional development courses for CRM's. It will result in a lifelong process of acquiring formal and informal trainings. It is proposed that after the pre-registration program for CRM's is completed, continued professional development programs should be introduced. The development program will augment the skills, knowledge, understanding and expertise of a registered nurse to enhancement of nursing and midwifery practices (An Bord Altranais,