The term ‘midwife’ translates to ‘with woman’.
As a Nurse Midwife in Volusia County for almost 30 years, it’s truly a privilege to work closely with hundreds of women at Halifax OBGYN Associates and Halifax Health Obstetrics. Nurse Midwives are Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioners (ARNP) who specialize in women’s health throughout their life span. As part of the maternity team, midwives offer prenatal care, labor & delivery support, postpartum care, lactation support and family planning services. Nurse Midwives have been in practice for over 75 years and were founded by Mary Breckenridge as the Frontier Nursing Service (FNS). FNS provided much needed maternity care to Appalachian women and families during The Great Depression and demonstrated that well-trained midwives could bring down mortality rates of mothers and babies. At the time, Midwives would travel by horseback to reach families in remote rural, isolated areas that had no access to healthcare.
I am very pleased to announce that Halifax Health has partnered with Georgetown University in Washington D.C. to begin accepting nursing students with Master’s degrees wanting to specialize in Nurse Midwifery care. Halifax Health has extended the opportunity to be a clinical site for those Florida registered nurses seeking to expand their professional role in Obstetrical care.
Today, Nurse Midwives are highly-skilled in obstetrical care with 85% of midwives practicing within hospitals and medical centers. Nurse Midwives also perform in other settings including birth centers and/or rural or underserved populations and tend to focus on providing personal education and support for low-risk pregnancies and health promotion through the woman’s entire lifespan. Halifax Health has made a commitment for providing the best maternity services and has embraced providing and supporting midwifery for nearly 25 years.
For more information, please contact Shelley Jones at 386.425.BABY.
The Safest Place To Have Your Baby | halifaxhealth.org/ob
