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Taking CEU classes or attending seminars on pregnancy and labor and birth will help strengthen your resume. Attend fetal monitoring workshops - there is so much to learn in L&D, and the more you can come in with, the better. Labor support, doula training, and lactation training can be helpful, too. Go ahead and get NRP certified. When you do these trainings on your own outside of work, it shows a sincere interest in OB nursing and L&D. And if it's your passion, you'll enjoy these trainings as well.

"How many unvaccinated coworkers are you aware of?" I want to revisit this question, now that my place of employment has a vaccine mandate in place. How many unvaccinated coworkers? ZERO. This number is a lot different than a couple weeks ago. And few dug in and refused to get vaccinated, but most changed their minds and got vaccinated with a looming deadline and threat of losing their jobs. One of the more conspiratorial-minded coworkers actually got vaccinated, THAT WAS A SURPRISE. There were a handful of exemptions, but vaccine-exempted employees are not allowed to provide direct patient care. So it's now ZERO on my unit. World of difference. Mandates work.

Can you expand on this a little bit? What do you think is going to happen? To Google? facebook?

Because it's a population strategy, not an individual one. High rates of unvaccinated people in a community cause harm to all of us: in terms of not only illness and suffering, but overwhelming hospitals, closing schools, rendering our society semi-defunct. One thing that has been solidified for me over the last year and a half, is how inadequate our public health education is in the nursing profession. We should all understand the principles of public health, but we don't.

I'm not in charge of firing nurses, so I'm not sure of the exact game plan. I agree, it is massively disruptive to staffing, and dangerous to patients. But I cannot fathom why my colleagues are refusing the vaccine, as I was getting tired of trying to keep myself alive with my unlimited re-use N95 mask last year, to try to protect myself. Within minutes of being offered the vaccine at work, I was running down the hall and in line to get it. I wish we could convince our healthcare colleagues to take this vaccine, and to promote vaccination to the general public instead of indulging their misguided selfishness. Maybe they need to suffer an economic and/or professional setback to see the value in vaccination? The carrot wasn't working. Now they're getting the stick. Have you convinced a hesitant colleague to accept the vaccine? What worked?

Until yesterday, I hadn't logged on to Allnurses in well over a year. I've missed the critical thinking and intelligent responses and dialogues here. It gives me some hope for nursing. For some, the truth hurts. Critical thinking hurts. I just want to express my appreciation to many of you, who can hold a grown-up conversation, and back your assertions with factual information and data. You make me better at what I do. I appreciate having my assumptions challenged by smart colleagues. Even in anonymous forums.

Yeah. And we wouldn't have to replace any of them if they were willing to get a safe and effective vaccine.

In trying to understand the absurdly high anti-vax rate among my coworkers and colleagues, this explanation makes sense. It's not real to them, any critically-ill pregnant patient is sent to ICU. I disagree that it's easy to train and replace OB nurses, but appreciate the optimism that there's a pool of (vaccinated!) RNs who want to enter the specialty. Is there any breakdown published anywhere of which areas of nursing have lowest rates of Covid vaccination? I'm interested, and if OB is up there, I won't be surprised.

Well, they appear to be risking their jobs with their choices. Think of how caring and compassionate to patients they'll be while they're unemployed.

How many unvaccinated coworkers are you aware of? How many? Over half my department (OBGYN), this includes providers and RNs. ?

I went to Frontier. I had to find my own clinical sites. So no, they did not help me find my clinical placement at all. This may have changed in recent years? I'm not sure. We were on our own.

I found the question refreshing. And here is my answer: YES! Absolutely! It's a pretty common misconception - among MANY people - patients, nurses, physicians and the public at large - that midwives eschew medical interventions and technology. And that's not the case. I have patients who ask if they can still see me if they - want an epidural for labor (YES!) - don't want to breastfeed (YES!) - want an induction of labor (YES!) I support natural birth and unmedicated birth, but more than that I support the patient's choices to decide what is best her her/him/them in their lives. This relates to their reproductive health care, their prenatal health care and their care during labor and birth. I even have patients under my care who are electing to have repeat cesarean births, and I WHOLLY SUPPORT THEM. I think you have a solid nursing background for entry into an advance practice role, and your personal experiences will give you something to draw upon. I recommend working on a mother-baby unit or L&D unit to really get a sense of the type of work - and the many variations out there - that you want to do.

I see a lot of questions about finding preceptors, and not a lot of responses. First (maybe this is obvious) - making online requests to the universe at large for a preceptor is probably not very effective. This is what I'd suggest: NETWORKING - in person. Go to local midwifery meetings. Go to midwifery seminars. Go to midwifery/nursing conferences - AWHONN, ACNM, ACOG. Attend Frontier case days in person. I cannot overemphasize the importance of making connections IN PERSON. If there is a doula meeting and there are going to be nurse-midwives there, GO. If a hospital is hosting a 'Meet the Midwives' day for their CNMs. GO. If there is a movie night about something birthy in the community and CNMs will be there. GO. When you get there, be friendly, ask the midwives about themselves and their practices. Be social. Let them know that you are looking for a clinical site, and ask if they have any ideas or suggestions. Preceptors are going to want to get a feel for you - and that is virtually impossible to do with online or email requests. My advice is to do whatever you can do - IN PERSON - to interface with CNMs. That is probably the best way to secure a clinical site.

I worked 24-32 hours per week on average. I had to do a lot of networking - and way ahead of time - to secure a site. Ideally, I wanted more sites, but it worked out that the practice was large enough and diverse enough that I got good experience. Also - my work experiences in L&D helped round out my experiences. I would not recommend precepting with only one CNM. That's just my opinion -you learn so much from working with multiple different providers.

I enrolled part-time for a couple of reasons. - My workplace had tuition reimbursement if I maintained my work schedule at a certain FTE. It was fairly generous - $3500-4000/year toward a graduate degree program if I remember correctly. -Working part-time along with the tuition reimbursement allowed me to pay outright for my tuition while I went through the program. I graduated with $0 in student loan debt. Studying wasn't excessive - and it was manageable to have a part-time work schedule and a part-time school schedule. 20 hours a week? I supposed it depended on the week. There were some classes that were more self-paced than others - I think I finished some weeks before the term was done. There was some flexibility. When I started clinicals, I had to travel outside of my community, and went to a per diem schedule at work. Clinicals were essentially full-time - or more - due to taking lots of call. But overall, I graduated in less than 3 years doing the part-time track at Frontier. Hope this information helps!