When one thinks of healthcare, hospitals, care centers, and treatment centers, doctors are the ones who comes to mind. Yes, doctors are crucial as they are the ones who are treating the patients, providing medications, and making them well. But others help in bettering the lives of the patients and provide the 24/7 care and support. They are the nurses and midwives. They are integral, and almost every health care facility recognizes that. Here is a detailed view of who are nurses and midwives, their roles, and how they stand crucial to the working and smooth operation of the healthcare system.
Who are midwives?
Midwives are just nurses with extra training to guide and care for pregnant women or during birth and labor. They are trained to handle birth room situations and help the women take care of their children after they are born.
Midwives are trained and tend to have more knowledge than nurses regarding pregnancy, labor, and complications during labor and childbirth. They can be found in hospitals, maternity centers, and community health centers in rural areas, etc.
Roles of midwives
Midwives have several roles from the antenatal period to the post-natal period.
- During pregnancy: during the pregnancy period, midwives help in preparing the mother for better childbirth. They take care of the reports, timely tests, fetal position, growth, etc., they provide continuous support and guidance to the new mother-to-be. They provide care for both hospital births and private births dependent on the future mother’s preference.
- During childbirth: midwives play a major role in the labor rooms. They provide continuous support, both medical and emotional, to the birthing mothers. They keep their doctors in the loop regarding the labor process and ask for the doctor’s immediate attention in case of complications. They also help mothers who choose to give birth at home. Keeping in mind that midwives do not give anesthesia or pain killers during birth, as doctors or anesthetists can only administer that.
- After the child’s birth: midwives help the new mothers to take care of themselves and their babies in a more certain way. They take the doctor’s advice regarding stitches and blood loss if the mother has suffered any. Also, they help mothers take care of their babies, like breastfeeding, settling the child, giving a bath, changing them, etc.; a midwife visits the mother later at home and if requested for both mother’s and child’s health screening within the first few weeks.
How midwives stand crucial for healthcare?
As per various research papers and surveys, it is found that midwives are the backbone of the maternity healthcare units. They stand crucial in most hospitals and care centers in urban, suburban, and rural areas. As per reports, millions of women suffer from pregnancy complications, death of either the mother or the child due to lack of proper care and support.
Therefore, midwives are that important in healthcare, mostly in maternity wards and centers. They help in bettering the medical care the mothers require. They also help in decreasing the mortality rates during pregnancy. They are elemental in making sure that the new mothers and pregnant women are informed about the process and are given the required knowledge regarding childbirth and aftercare. This has significantly increased the overall health of new mothers.
Who are nurses?
Everyone knows who nurses are. They are the ones who take care of the patients from the moment they arrive at hospitals and care centers till they leave. Nurses are trained professionals who are certified to work at medical centers and hospitals.
They are responsible for assisting doctors, record keeping, administering treatments and medications, performing tests, advocating good health, and providing support to patients. Without nurses, healthcare facilities will not function the way they do in the current day.
Roles of nurses:
There are several functions and roles of a full-time nurse in healthcare facilities:
Advocacy: the very first job of a nurse is to keep the patients’ best interest in mind while being on the job. Patients usually are unaware of the medical situations, and they may not act in favor of their betterment. It is the nurse’s job to take care of their well-being and guide them through the entire process. They need to make them understand and continuously collaborate with the doctors for better judgment.
Patient care: one of the biggest jobs of nurses defined by any healthcare system is that they are responsible for taking care of the patient. They observe the patients and help them recover by advising them what doctors have told the former. They keep track of their vitals and their overall progress when it comes to treatments and medications.
Communication and support: nurses are responsible for communicating the health conditions and symptoms with the specialists and doctors in the hospitals. They are also responsible for creating reports and keeping them up to date for future reference by the doctors.
Overall, nurses are the ones who are keeping the healthcare facilities together with their continuous efforts to help the patients and doctors alike. They provide patient care and knowledge to the patients as well so that they can tackle the problem in a better way.
How nurses are an integral part of healthcare?
They are the ones who spend more time with the patients and take care of them day in and day out. They are the ones who make sure that the patients are well taken care of. They are playing a larger role in educating the patients and supporting them physically, psychologically, and mentally. They are constant in trying to better their patient’s life. That makes it quite integral to healthcare. Without them, the systems will not work efficiently, and the healthcare system will crumble eventually.
Having doctors is not enough when it comes to healthcare. Nurses and midwives play a large role in bettering lives as well. They are an integral pillar of the healthcare system. With their continuous help and care, a patient can get better.
