Sustaining Midwifery

Midwives provide high quality, cost-effective maternity care to Ontario’s women and their babies.  Midwives are primary care providers, and are fully funded by the province.  In the 10 years since regulation, midwifery has proven a success story of women caring for women, and a model for client centred community based care.

This year, midwives in Ontario will deliver about 9,000 babies.  Midwifery is the only obstetrical care profession that is growing as more and more physicians give up obstetrical care, but demand is growing faster than the profession.

Sustainability of the profession is now a top priority as midwives face many of the same pressures pushing physicians out of delivering babies.

How Clients Benefit from Sustaining Midwifery

The needs of the mother and her baby are at the centre of the midwifery model of care.  Women value the relationship they build with their midwife, the individualized care they receive, and the around-the-clock accessibility.  A recent survey of midwifery clients found a 98.7% satisfaction rate.

Midwifery care also achieves excellent clinical outcomes.  Midwifery clients have a much lower rate of obstetrical interventions like c-sections, and a much higher rate of early discharge from hospital.

How the Health Care System Benefits from Sustaining Midwifery

Midwives are already providing the kind of care that Minister Smitherman is seeking to achieve through his transformation agenda, with an accountable, cost-effective, client-centred approach that moves care from the hospital to the community and emphasizes health promotion.  According to Ministry figures, each time a woman chooses a midwife, it saves the health care system between $800 and $1,800.  An Ottawa hospital administrator estimated each midwifery birth saves his hospital $950.
 

Most of the care that midwives provide is in the community.  Midwives provide the kind of care that clients want while creating significant savings for the health care system by reducing the demand for hospital services.  If midwifery does not grow, more low risk pregnancies will have to be handled by high-risk specialists, like obstetricians.

Challenges for Sustaining the Profession

Midwives are dedicated care providers, but it is a demanding profession.  For doctors and midwives alike, providing maternity care entails significant responsibility, long and irregular hours, and spending most of the time on-call.  The result is significant job-related stress and a concerning attrition rate.  Midwifery is the only maternity care profession with the potential for growth. More needs to be done to attract and retain midwives if this potential is to be realized.

Primary care reform relies on the collaboration of care providers.  Workable collaboration models require each member of the team to feel appropriately valued.  This means equitable compensation.

Provincial action to sustain midwifery is critical if Ontario’s women are to get the quality maternity care they demand, and savings to the health care system are to be realized. 

Learn More

Fact sheets on the benefits of midwifery are attached.  Please contact the AOM for a personal briefing on how the Provincial Government can help sustain midwifery.
 

November 2004