Nurse-Midwife and OBGYN Partnership Offers Best of Both Worlds
By Denise Foley on 02/28/2020
“We wanted to create a cooperative, collegial relationship. We wanted a homogeneous department with unified policies and principles for all groups.”
– Dr. Kim
All Part of the Team
Hear the word “midwife,” and you might picture a woman delivering a squalling infant in a cabin on the prairie (probably in a snowstorm) or perhaps in a humble London flat (if you’re a fan of PBS’s Call the Midwife).
These days a midwife birth is more likely to happen somewhere like the second-floor Labor & Delivery Unit at Einstein Medical Center Montgomery.
There, Michelle Djevharian, CNM, is one of five nurse-midwives on staff who are part of an innovative collaboration that delivers more than 2,000 babies a year. The team includes nurses, staff, private-practice obstetricians, and nurse-midwives.
“People assume that midwives just deliver babies at home and that’s just not true,” says Djevharian.
In fact, 94% of all midwife-attended births occur in hospitals, according to the American College of Nurse-Midwives.
Besides staff members, whom Einstein employs, nurse-midwives from four local practices attend births at Einstein Montgomery. They are drawn by its welcoming attitude and patient-centered team approach to childbirth.
“The collaborative relationship between the midwives, doctors and nurses at Einstein is really lovely,” says Jennyfer Floyd, CNM, of WomenWise Midwifery in East Norriton. “It is really unusual. We’re like a unicorn, especially in this area. The hospital understands the benefit of midwifery and uses it to its full potential.”
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