Integrated Midwife–Physician Practice: Obstetric Darwinism?

✍ Scribed by Tekoa King CNM; MPH; Mary Ann Shah CNM; MS; FACNM

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1998
• Weight: 89 KB
• Volume: 43
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0091-2182
• DOI: 10.1016/s0091-2182(97)00126-2

✦ Synopsis

The health care delivery system is experiencing rapid changes in structure and form. Economically driven reform efforts emphasize cost-containment that encompasses quality and patient satisfaction. Collaborative or joint nurse-midwife/physician practices have been proposed as one solution ideally suited to meet the contingencies of the new era of health care. Collaborative efforts can range from clinical collaboration to financial and structural integration between midwives and physician partners. The structure of different interdisciplinary models is presented. Future issues faced by one such model, the joint or integrated midwife/physician practice, are discussed. ᭧ 1998 by the American College of Nurse-Midwives.

Natural selection will always tend to preserve all the individuals varying in the same direction, though in different degrees, so as better to fill up the unoccupied place (Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859).