Ohio State’s nurse-midwifery program is delivering a growing profession in central Ohio, providing women and expectant mothers more options in health care.

Certified nurse-midwives are licensed health care practitioners with a bachelor of science and a master of science degree in nursing as well as certification by the American College of Nurse-Midwives.

CNMs provide health care for women including prenatal care, labor and delivery care, postpartum care, obstetrics and gynecological care, family planning, preconception care, menopausal management and disease prevention.

The program was started at OSU by Nancy K. Lowe, professor and director of the nurse-midwifery graduate programs in the College of Nursing. Lowe received her nurse-midwifery education from the Frontier School of Midwifery and Family Nursing in Hyden, Ky. in 1994. She has spent more than 30 years in obstetrical nursing.

“Students are prepared as CNMs in a two-year master’s program,” Lowe said. “The program is designed to meet the core competencies of midwifery practice of the ACNM. The curriculum content and clinical experience requirements meet all national standards for the education of CNMs.”

“Midwife means ‘with woman’ and that is the essence in the philosophy of our care,” she said. “We are experts in normalcy, in safeguarding normalcy and in promoting childbearing as a positive health-enhancing life experience.”

OSU nurse-midwife graduates Ranie Cropper and Susie Harding were part of the first graduating midwifery class in 1998. Both women now work as advanced practice nurses at Professionals for Women’s Health providing personalized health care for women.

“It’s an awesome responsibility through office labor and delivery,” Harding said. “It’s all taken very seriously, and it’s rewarding because people appreciate your help.”

Harding, originally from Delaware, Ohio, earned her bachelor’s degree in nursing at Columbus State University and her master’s of science degree at Franklin University. Before enrolling into OSU’s nurse-midwifery program, she worked as a registered nurse in the OB/GYN department at Riverside Hospital and as a nurse health practitioner at Professional’s for Women’s Health.

Harding said it was working as a nurse practitioner that prompted her to think about becoming a nurse-midwife when pregnant women would ask her if she could deliver their baby.

“They would ask, ‘Can you deliver my baby?’ and I would say, ‘No, I can’t do that. I can see you during and I can see you for your postpartum visits, but I can’t do the delivery,’ ” Harding said. “That’s what got me thinking.”

Cropper said it was her experience while in the military that got her interested in becoming a CNM.

“I started off working in the maternity ward caring for women after they delivered their babies,” Cropper said. “It was at that time that I worked with the nurse-midwives in the military, that I realized that’s what I want to do.”

Cropper was born in Taiwan and moved to California where she lived with her family for 10 years. She lived in Cleveland and then moved to Columbus where she received her bachelor’s degree and her master’s degree in nursing at OSU.

Before joining Professionals for Women’s Health in March 2000, she worked as a nurse practitioner in an OB/GYN practice.

Cropper said the nurse-midwifery program at OSU was very time consuming, but because the classes were offered online it allowed the students freedom to do classwork at their own pace.

“All in all, it was a good program,” she said. “We were the first class to go through, so there were some kinks in the program that we ironed out with our instructors.

“What I liked about the program was that it was self-paced. But a lot of people thought it being on the computer they would ask ‘do you have good communication with your instructors?’ and I thought it was better because we were constantly e-mailing the instructors discussing problems or situations. Even though, it was called ‘distance learning,’ ” Cropper said.

“As far as hands-on training, we had them with preceptors in private offices or in clinics, so there was a lot of traveling during the program,” she said.

Harding agreed that the program was challenging.

“Because the clinical sites available with nurse-midwifery in Columbus were so limited at that time, you had to go where nurse-midwives were practicing to get your clinicals done,” Harding said.

Cropper said that sometimes they had to travel to Portsmouth or the Cleveland Clinic for clinicals, although some were available at OSU.

Professionals for Women’s Health was founded by Dr. Kevin J. Hackett in 1987, taking women’s health care to a higher level. There are three practices in and around the Columbus area.

“Our physicians are wonderful advocates of advanced practice nurses,” Harding said. “They believe in us, they fight the barriers with us and they support us.

“If we have a patient that we detect a problem with outside of our scope of practice, we just get them in with a physician,” she said. “Our patients have the best of both worlds.”

Harding said there are a lot of misconceptions about what nurse-midwives actually do.

“A lot of people think of a nurse-midwife and they just think of pregnant women,” she said. “But, actually nurse-midwives function as nurse practitioners. You see women through life.”

Cropper said there is not a specific type of person that seeks the care of a nurse-midwife. Generally, she finds that potential patients are very educated and know exactly what nurse-midwives do by researching, looking into outcomes and other options and are basically looking for a natural experience.

“As far as pregnancy, labor and delivery, (the patients) want somebody they can develop a relationship with by getting to know us and to talk about what they hope for in their experience,” Harding said. “They’re looking for time to communicate and be listened to.

“Outside of pregnancy, labor and delivery, the difference (between care of a nurse-midwife and a physician) is our schedules are a little bit different then that of a physician’s. We are allotted more time with patients, so we can build that relationship and communication piece.”

Medicine and midwifery approach childbearing from two somewhat different perspectives, Lowe said.

“Medical care is oriented toward the identification and treatment of problems,” she said. “Midwifery care begins with the premise that childbearing is a normal life process embedded in the context of family and community.”

Lowe said that women who seek CNMs will receive the same screening tests that they would from a physician. However, they will also receive teaching and counseling that focuses on their individual needs and an approach to child bearing that is non-interventive unless necessary for the health and safety of the mother and baby.

“The best way to a healthy baby is a healthy mother, and CNMs understand that the more information a woman has about how to care for herself well, the more likely she will have a healthy baby.”

“We love our work. We’re here for the patients. That’s the bottom line,” Harding said. “We’re here to try to meet their needs.”