The role of hospital midwives in the Netherlands

Background: Most midwives in the Netherlands work in primary care where they are the lead professionals providing care to women with 'normal' or uncomplicated pregnancies, while some midwives work in hospitals ("clinical midwives"). The actual involvement of midwives in maternity care in hospitals is unknown, because in all statistics births in secondary care are registered as births assisted by gynaecologists. The aim of this study is to gain insight in the involvement of midwives with births in secondary care, under supervision of a gynaecologist. This is done using data from the PRN (The Ne... Mehr ...