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Comment by inglesp | Hacker News Reader

Can you expand a bit on what you mean by "midwifery is illegal"? To me, that sounds as odd as "dentistry is illegal" ...

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See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_birth#United_States

for a bit of insight into the US legal situation.

I suspect he means that in some jurisdictions, you need to be a licensed medical practitioner of some sort, so the traditional "on the ground" experience of midwives by itself won't qualify.

In the UK a midwife is a qualified registered specialist nurse.

It's a protected term - you can't call yourself a midwife withoutthe qualification and registration.

Most midwives are employed by the NHS.

Obviously they're not doctors - they can't prescribe medication or perform surgery.

This could be a translation error, but "birth nurses" seem to be called "midwives" in the UK whereas that's not the case in the US (at least as I understand it).

There are different certifications. One in the US is Certified Nurse Midwife, essentially they are RNs with a certification in midwifery as well. They can have privileges at hospitals, which is a very useful backup in cases where something goes wrong in a non-911 sort of manner. There are also Certified Midwifes, which have a somewhat less medical oriented training and may not be able to bring patients into a hospital as 'their patient'.

(A little late but...) I said that because, for example I stubbled across a UK show called 'Midwives' and it was about a maternity ward. Most of the people there are what I would call 'nurses' in the US, even if they are Nurse-Midwives by certification. I was expecting the show to be about something more akin to home-births.

I have an aunt that's a neo-natal nurse, and I've never heard her refer to fellow nurses as midwives (but I've never directly asked her before).

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