Duties and responsibilities
A home care midwife is a midwife who provides support to mothers in a home care environment. Typically, they travel to the mothers home to provide checkups when their baby is born.Their typical duties and responsibilities include:
- Visiting mothers and babies in their home
- Assessing the baby, and sometimes the mother, to monitor their progress and check they are coping
- Supporting new mothers and offering them advice
- Coordinating with other healthcare professionals if need be
Qualifications
To become a nurse midwife, you must have a bachelors degree in nursing, achieve a registered nursing licence and have at least a master’s degree from an accredited program.
Skills and relevant work experience
Home care nurse midwives must have the physical stamina to be on their feet all day. As well as this, community midwives must need skills such as:
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- Problem solving skills, as nurse midwives need to find ways to overcome any issues that mothers and babies will have
- Compassion and empathy, as mothers may be struggling and nurse midwives need to be understanding
- Communication skills, as home care midwives will need to communicate their ideas to mothers and keep written documents up to date
- Organization skills, as home care midwives will often see many clients throughout the day and must stick to their schedule
Hours
Community nurse midwives tend to work full time. However, there are part time opportunities available. They may also have to work nights or weekends to accommodate to their patients schedule. Generally, they will have to spend a lot of time travelling between different home healthcare settings.
Salary
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual wage for a nurse midwives in the United States was $105,030 in 2019. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $82,460 and the highest 10 percent earned more than $184,180 per year. Community midwives can expect to earn within this range too.
Progression
There is great career outlook for all midwives and the occupation offers lots of exciting job opportunities. Home care nurse midwives can progress to more senior roles. In these roles, they will be responsible for training and supervising other midwives.