IMPORTANCE OF BUSINESS KNOWLEDGE TO THE FUTURE OF MIDWIFERY
IMPORTANCE OF BUSINESS KNOWLEDGE TO THE FUTURE OF MIDWIFERY
IMPORTANCE OF BUSINESS KNOWLEDGE TO THE FUTURE OF MIDWIFERY
Midwives have been around for thousands of years. Having clients with all this knowledge at their fingertips and the world going through a pandemic has really made people go back to the basics of living: safe, simple, and family-oriented. Midwives are prime care providers for that shift in mindset. We live in an age where starting a business isn’t a fraction of the costs of twenty years ago. Marketing online barely costs anything, mostly time. We can access millions of people to spread our mission, message, and services.
The practice of midwifery seems timeless with a sturdy scenario of development, improved understanding, and professional practice. Regulations and scope of practice rights are improving. States are giving more autonomy to midwives and birth centers so families can have access to birth options outside of the hospital. Insurance reimbursement barriers for out-of-hospital births are getting broken down. The Legislature is recognizing the value of midwifery services.
With the rising demands of midwifery around the country, more and more midwives are considering starting their own practice. Hence, you cannot jump off the road without any knowledge of the business. Midwives need to have a widespread amount of knowledge, whether it is the understanding of client’s needs, business environment skills, managing staff, decision making, collaboration, financial management, interpersonal skills, as well as industry-specific knowledge. These are the top-notch gen any person who wants to indulge themselves in business should have. Technology is allowing midwifery to be promoted, researched, and sought after at an unprecedented level. Media, blogs, and Facebook groups are constantly talking about how amazing midwifery care is. We have opportunities to join together internationally with social media to spread our wisdom, resources, and inspiration. Be part of the momentum of natural childbirth fever. The pandemic is having families simplify and focus on what matters most in life: family and safe birth options.
The future of midwifery advocating midwives provide quality and excellent care every mother needs, added by the right amount of business knowledge, has become visible and is now getting clearer as days go by. Midwives can really have a massive impact on keeping low-risk mothers and babies out of the hospital setting.
What will midwifery’s continued transformation look like? Judith Rooks’ editorial, “Unity in Midwifery? Realities and Alternatives,” outlines three possibilities: cooptation, convergence, and parallel paths. In the first path, co-optation, direct-entry midwifery is absorbed into nurse-midwifery. Rooks emphasizes that this path is not a desirable outcome, as the unique and valuable characteristics of home-birth-based direct-entry midwifery would be lost. In the second path, nurse-midwifery and direct-entry midwifery converge in a way that preserves the most valuable characteristics of each. Rooks describes this possibility as contingent on two major changes: ACNM-style midwifery becoming independent from nursing, and MANA-style direct-entry midwifery accepting the necessity of formal education as a mandatory requirement. In other words, ACNM must sacrifice some credibility in favor of greater autonomy, while MANA must surrender some autonomy for greater credibility, in order for the two midwifery models to be compatible for convergence. The third possibility Rooks identifies, parallel paths, involves MANA and ACNM co-existing indefinitely, with three possible modes: minimal interaction, hostility and competition, and collaboration and mutual support
Take your leap into business ownership and build that midwifery practice that has been weighing on your mind for years now! We have an amazing future in the United States and the world to help families get back to normal childbirth in a personalized, high-quality model of care.
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