I have been reading the midwife thread for about a year now and after 2 years of pre-reqs and 1 year of applications, I found out this week that I have been accepted to a few of the midwifery programs that I have applied to. Therefore, I just wanted to write and say hi to everyone.
Now I can say that I am a student nurse going into Midwifery and Women's Health.
I also wanted to say thank you to everyone for all your comments and advice on the threads. It has been great reading about the profession and our role as providers to get an idea of what to expect.
Thank you soo much for your response, you actually have me thinking more in depth to this school search now. I am a people person and love class interaction like you so im thinking a B&M school maybe best for my learning style. i still plan on applying to some online schools just to increase my odds ( my GPA isn't the best), but definitely looking into some on campus programs now. and YES it's like you read my mind about " Does the school conduct international nursing service missions if that is important to you?" This is important to me but i have yet to find any that do. have you found any if so please share! Thank you again!
You are very welcome. To answer your question about international nursing service missions I think a little background is needed. You probably know this already since you are researching CNM programs but hopefully this will help future midwives who are coming on the boards and have some of the same questions that you do.
As of right now, there are between 30-40 midwifery schools in the United States that meet the accreditation requirements for CNM based upon my research. We have around 12,000 registered midwives in the United States with each school graduating between 8 to 30 students per year depending on each schools resources (preceptors, clinical sites etc).
My understanding is that the larger and more well known midwifery schools will all have some type of service mission at their university. Some schools include international nursing missions as part of their marketing materials for prospective students and others do not. Vanderbilt as an example does not advertise heavily that they have international nursing service missions but they do in fact have them but it is organized outside of the university but the people that go on the mission are affiliated with the university in some capacity. That is based on my conversations with some of the students that currently attend the school.
Then you have other schools on the other side of the coin like UCSF, Penn, Yale, Emory, Columbia etc that tout their international nursing service missions as something students can elect to do as an option during one of their summers to gain more experience in global health or to learn more about health equity. Some of the places where they have gone or have relationships are as follows again based upon my own research and talking with the schools are Guatemala, Thailand, Cambodia Ghana, and Uganda. This is just off the top of my head. I believe there are more countries and places but I will have to go back to my notes to see if there are more.
I have by no means looked at all the midwifery schools in the United States so I can't really provide a comprehensive answer since it will depend on so many factors including your own geographical location and which schools you are interested in. But if anyone on the boards can answer with regards to the other well known midwifery schools like Frontier, Case Western, Stonybrook, OSHU, U of M, please add to this thread. I am most familiar with schools that have non nurse direct entry options since those are the only ones that I could apply to given my own background.
Just keep in mind that if nursing service missions are important to you, in terms of scale and logistics, larger universities will have more opportunities for you to conduct nursing missions just because larger universities have more funding and resources, the faculty are conducting research in that area and have relationships and ties with certain parts of the world, they might also have a historical relationship with a sister university in the part of the world that you are interested in and have been there before, and the school might also have a large alumni pool that have gotten their degree at the university and have gone back to their home country to continue to work with local populations and promote health equity.
There is a lot of information out there but my suggestion to you is to do your research and to talk with the local students and look through university websites. Most universities will talk about their medical missions and where their nursing students have gone to in the past. If there is a particular university that you are interested in, I would suggest reaching out to the school of nursing and see if they can direct you to a webpage or you can try and use your networks to see if you know a friend of a friend who knows someone that you can speak to at that university.
Ohm108, MSN, NP, CNM
433 Posts
You are very welcome. To answer your question about international nursing service missions I think a little background is needed. You probably know this already since you are researching CNM programs but hopefully this will help future midwives who are coming on the boards and have some of the same questions that you do.
As of right now, there are between 30-40 midwifery schools in the United States that meet the accreditation requirements for CNM based upon my research. We have around 12,000 registered midwives in the United States with each school graduating between 8 to 30 students per year depending on each schools resources (preceptors, clinical sites etc).
My understanding is that the larger and more well known midwifery schools will all have some type of service mission at their university. Some schools include international nursing missions as part of their marketing materials for prospective students and others do not. Vanderbilt as an example does not advertise heavily that they have international nursing service missions but they do in fact have them but it is organized outside of the university but the people that go on the mission are affiliated with the university in some capacity. That is based on my conversations with some of the students that currently attend the school.
Then you have other schools on the other side of the coin like UCSF, Penn, Yale, Emory, Columbia etc that tout their international nursing service missions as something students can elect to do as an option during one of their summers to gain more experience in global health or to learn more about health equity. Some of the places where they have gone or have relationships are as follows again based upon my own research and talking with the schools are Guatemala, Thailand, Cambodia Ghana, and Uganda. This is just off the top of my head. I believe there are more countries and places but I will have to go back to my notes to see if there are more.
I have by no means looked at all the midwifery schools in the United States so I can't really provide a comprehensive answer since it will depend on so many factors including your own geographical location and which schools you are interested in. But if anyone on the boards can answer with regards to the other well known midwifery schools like Frontier, Case Western, Stonybrook, OSHU, U of M, please add to this thread. I am most familiar with schools that have non nurse direct entry options since those are the only ones that I could apply to given my own background.
Just keep in mind that if nursing service missions are important to you, in terms of scale and logistics, larger universities will have more opportunities for you to conduct nursing missions just because larger universities have more funding and resources, the faculty are conducting research in that area and have relationships and ties with certain parts of the world, they might also have a historical relationship with a sister university in the part of the world that you are interested in and have been there before, and the school might also have a large alumni pool that have gotten their degree at the university and have gone back to their home country to continue to work with local populations and promote health equity.
There is a lot of information out there but my suggestion to you is to do your research and to talk with the local students and look through university websites. Most universities will talk about their medical missions and where their nursing students have gone to in the past. If there is a particular university that you are interested in, I would suggest reaching out to the school of nursing and see if they can direct you to a webpage or you can try and use your networks to see if you know a friend of a friend who knows someone that you can speak to at that university.