PURPOSE This paper analyzed alternative methods of calculating the conversion factor for nurse-midwife's delivery services in the national health insurance and estimated the optimal reimbursement level for the services. METHODS A cost accounting model and Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) model were developed to estimate the conversion factor of Resource-Based Relative Value Scale (RBRVS) for nur...

In America, there were a number of praiseworthy attempts to improve the position of the midwife in the early nineteenth century, and an increase in the number of European midwives accompanied the influx of immigrants after the 1880s. Yet the midwives' position was so insecure that they nearly died out as more and more women opted for physician deliveries in hospital. Only recently, since the 19...

BACKGROUND In contrast to other countries, Austria rarely offers alternative models to medical led-care. In an attempt to improve the facilities, a midwife-led care service was incorporated within the Department of Obstetrics and Fetomaternal Medicine. The aim of the present study was to analyze the maternal and neonatal outcomes of this approach. METHODS Over a 10-years period, a total of 21...

Louise Bourgeois was the first practicing midwife to write of her experience of childbirth and of women's problems. She did much to enhance the respect in which her craft was held. For 26 years she was midwife to the royal court.

BACKGROUND Embryo transfer (ET) in assisted reproduction treatments has traditionally been performed by gynecologists in the Nordic countries. As gynecologists often have a busy schedule, midwives and nurses have become increasingly important in performing the treatment, providing subject information, ultrasound monitoring and assistance at ET. As part of the continuous development of our IVF t...

BACKGROUND Internationally, a typical model of maternity care is a medically led system with varying levels of midwifery input. New Zealand has a midwife-led model of care, and there are movements in other countries to adopt such a system. There is a paucity of systemic evaluation that formally investigates safety-related outcomes in relationship to midwife-led care within an entire maternity s...

BACKGROUND Medical staff's influence on patient outcomes has become a subject of interest. We evaluated experienced midwives and compared their performance concerning perineal lacerations (PL). METHODS In a retrospective cohort study, 1937 women with singleton pregnancies who had delivered spontaneously with a cephalic presentation by experienced midwives in the Medical University of Vienna f...

Larsson, B. 2017. Treatment for childbirth fear with a focus on midwife-led counselling. A national overview, women’s birth preferences and experiences of counselling. Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Medicine 1341. 77 pp. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. ISBN 978-91-513-0003-0. Background: Many women experience childbirth fear to such an exte...

BACKGROUND Midwives are primary providers of care for childbearing women around the world. However, there is a lack of synthesised information to establish whether there are differences in morbidity and mortality, effectiveness and psychosocial outcomes between midwife-led and other models of care. OBJECTIVES To compare midwife-led models of care with other models of care for childbearing wom...