[rosalia.marques]

My question is how many women in labor a midwife can take care of at one time
Here in Portugal there are no standars in this matter... and now a days there is a big shortage of midwives
I´ve to define the number of midwives in delivery room and i´ve no standards in which to base my numbers unless the experience and what we consider good practice
I´m a head nurse at a delivery room and obstetric urgence - We also have a operatoring theatre for cesareans
If you could help, i´d be very pleased
Rosália


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[Major]

The reply depends on your support staff. Do you have nurses in a resonable ratio to care for the laboring women to free the midwives for just the deliveries? (unfortunetly this takes away the true labor support the midwife likes to give the midwife bascially becomes just another physician provider - but it increases the efficiency of your service)

Are there back-up personnel to call if 2 or 3 deliveries happen at once? What is your normal Physician/laboring patient ratio?

You probally sould not exceed that.

Also - check out ACOG standards(American College of OB GYN)

AND look at
American College of Nurse Midwives standards - found at acnm.org


I've seen a single Nurse Midwives in a large practices care for as many as 4-5 women in labor at once but it gets hard to coordinate the deliveries. AND most of these were low risk patients or moderate risk patients being co-managed/consulting with physicians.

And it took place in a medical center with physician backup and nursing support.

How is your system set up to address issues of understaffing?

Originally posted by rosalia.marques:

My question is how many women in labor a midwife can take care of at one time
Here in Portugal there are no standars in this matter... and now a days there is a big shortage of midwives
I´ve to define the number of midwives in delivery room and i´ve no standards in which to base my numbers unless the experience and what we consider good practice
I´m a head nurse at a delivery room and obstetric urgence - We also have a operatoring theatre for cesareans
If you could help, i´d be very pleased
Rosália

[kennedyj]

As major metioned it greatly depends on your support. We have a high risk setting that delivers about 100 births /month. Most nurses attend a full time 4 month course prior to working labor and delivery. The nurses do the SROM checks, Labor checks, cervical exams, and work with the moms in every way. The Obstetrician only needs to check in on the patients from time to time and usually gowns and comes in when the patient is about 5-10 minutes from delivery. This allows one provider to have many patients. But once again you need a very well trained nursing staff. We are also trained in deliveries so if there is a c/s or another delivery going on the nurses can do the delivery. Especially if the on call doc has not arrived yet.

Best of luck with your facility,
J