Business and financial knowledge are increasingly vital for the future of midwifery. As midwives and birth professionals navigate evolving healthcare landscapes, mastering these skills ensures they can manage their practices effectively, sustain their businesses, and provide high-quality care. Financial literacy helps with budgeting, setting fair pricing, handling taxes, and planning for long-term growth. Understanding business principles also empowers midwives to thrive independently or within larger organizations, ensuring stability and sustainability in an industry that requires both compassion and financial acumen. In a rapidly changing field, these skills are crucial for success and long-term impact.

Midwives have been around for thousands of years. Having clients with all this knowledge at their fingertips and the world going through a pandemic has made people go back to the basics of living: safe, simple, and family-oriented. Midwives are prime care providers for that shift in mindset. We live in an age where starting a business isn't a fraction of the cost of twenty years ago. Marketing online barely costs anything, mostly time. We can reach millions of people to spread our mission, message, and services. 

          The practice of midwifery seems timeless, with a sturdy scenario of development, improved understanding, and professional practice. Regulations and scope of practice rights are improving. States are giving more autonomy to midwives and birth centers so families can have access to birth options outside of the hospital. Insurance reimbursement barriers for out-of-hospital births are getting broken down. The Legislature is recognizing the value of midwifery services. 

           With the rising demands of midwifery around the country, more and more midwives are considering starting their practice. Hence, you cannot jump off the road without any knowledge of the business. Midwives need to have a wide amount of knowledge, whether it is the understanding of client’s needs, business environment skills, managing staff, decision-making, collaboration, financial management, interpersonal skills, or industry-specific knowledge. These are the top-notch gen any person who wants to indulge themselves in business should have. Technology is allowing midwifery to be promoted, researched, and sought after at an unprecedented level. Media, blogs, and Facebook groups are constantly talking about how amazing midwifery care is. We have opportunities to join together internationally with social media to spread our wisdom, resources, and inspiration. Be part of the momentum of natural childbirth fever. The pandemic is having families simplify and focus on what matters most in life: family and safe birth options. 

            The future of midwifery, advocating that midwives provide quality and excellent care every mother needs, added by the right amount of business knowledge, has become visible and is now getting clearer as days go by. Midwives can have a massive impact on keeping low-risk mothers and babies out of the hospital setting. 

             What will midwifery’s continued transformation look like? Judith Rooks’ editorial, “Unity in Midwifery: Realities and Alternatives,” outlines three possibilities: cooptation, convergence, and parallel paths. In the first path, co-optation, direct-entry midwifery is absorbed into nurse-midwifery. Rooks emphasizes that this path is not a desirable outcome, as the unique and valuable characteristics of home-birth-based direct-entry midwifery would be lost. In the second path, nurse-midwifery and direct-entry midwifery converge in a way that preserves the most valuable characteristics of each. Rooks describes this possibility as contingent on two major changes: ACNM-style midwifery becoming independent from nursing, and MANA-style direct-entry midwifery accepting the necessity of formal education as a mandatory requirement. In other words, ACNM must sacrifice some credibility in favor of greater autonomy, while MANA must surrender some autonomy for greater credibility, for the two midwifery models to be compatible for convergence. The third possibility Rooks identifies, parallel paths, involves MANA and ACNM co-existing indefinitely, with three possible modes: minimal interaction, hostility and competition, and collaboration and mutual support

           Take your leap into business ownership and build that midwifery practice that has been weighing on your mind for years now! We have an amazing future in the United States and the world to help families get back to normal childbirth in a personalized, high-quality model of care. 

Reference

Rooks, Judith. “Unity in Midwifery? Realities and Alternatives.” Journal of Nurse-Midwifery 43.5 (1998): 315–319.