Certified Nurse Midwives are prepared to:

• Perform comprehensive health assessments, including ordering and interpreting diagnostic procedures
• Partner with patients and families for health promotion and disease prevention
• Generate differential diagnoses and manage acute and chronic health problems 
• Prescribe and evaluate therapies (medication and non-medication-based)
• Utilize developmental, patient-and family-centered approaches
• Act as leaders in healthcare systems
• Advocate for the role of Nurse-Midwives and culturally relevant birth workers

Graduates from our Nurse Midwifery track practice independently and within larger healthcare teams. They work in a variety of settings and with diverse populations, including:

• Birthing centers
• Hospitals
• Ambulatory care clinics
• Private offices
• Community and public health centers
• Medically underserved and rural practice settings
• Military installations
• International health agencies

The DNP curriculum starts with a shared first-year core, offering a strong foundation in advanced practice and leadership, before transitioning into specialized coursework tailored to each track, allowing students to develop targeted expertise and drive advancements in healthcare.

View the current DNP Nurse-Midwifery curriculum grid

For the years 2021-2024, the combined graduation rates for the DNP and graduate certificate programs were 90%, 93%, and 91%. The weighted graduation rate was 91% over the three years. Graduation rates for the Nurse-Midwifery DNP program were 100%, 91%, and 100%. The weighted graduation rate was 96% over the three years.

The UW Nurse-Midwifery and Women’s Health Clinical Nurse Specialist programs undertook a truth and reconciliation process in 2020-2022 to address harms that impacted former and current students in our program. You can review the final report describing the process and outcomes from this process.

Philosophy

The UW Nurse-Midwifery and Women’s Health Clinical Nurse Specialist programs aim to train and support the education of highly qualified and compassionate health care providers caring for individuals and families through the reproductive life course. We acknowledge the unacceptably high mortality rate of Black and Indigenous birthing people and infants in this country due to medical racism, social determinants of health, and chronic stress. We also acknowledge that systemic racism exists within our school and our programs,  and we strive to build an anti-racist culture in academia to create a more equitable and safe future for all families. Our guiding philosophy is grounded on the following values:

• Autonomy and self-determination: We believe all people have the right to access a full spectrum of sexual and reproductive health care, and we trust people to know what is best for their own bodies and make the best decisions for themselves. We provide training sites for our students to learn skills to provide services, including care related to pregnancy, birth, abortion care, gynecology across the lifespan, primary care, and gender-affirming care for all people seeking these services.
• Social and reproductive justice: We believe that it is our responsibility to leverage the privilege and power granted to us by our position within the healthcare field to support and amplify the voices of those in communities marginalized by racism and discrimination. We recognize the need for all faculty and students to do the work to develop an anti-racist program. We acknowledge the deep history of medical racism and the structures within the healthcare system that perpetuate harm to marginalized communities. We aim for students to emerge from our program with the skills to disrupt and rebuild structures.
• Collaboration and community engagement: We believe that collaboration extends beyond the traditional relationship with our physician colleagues and includes those with expertise in other professions within and outside of the nursing profession. This includes nurses, those in other advanced practice nurse specialties, community-based midwives, nursing and midwifery students, and the communities that we all serve. Our commitment to community engagement is demonstrated by our goal to center community stakeholders, including students and alumni, in how the program is structured and prioritizing our relationships with community partners.
• Accountability:  We hold ourselves accountable for adhering to these values and building systems that maintain integrity in our program. We prioritize student involvement in all aspects of the nurse-midwifery program and center their experiences as foundational to our success. We value the expertise and are accountable to our community partners to ensure we uphold the values we describe.

Mission

The mission of the UW Nurse-Midwifery program is to advance midwifery practice through the preparation of nurse-midwives who will:

• Apply scientific evidence and person-centered care principles to promote the health and well-being of individuals and families in Washington communities and beyond.
• Serve as leaders in advancing healthcare practice by applying, generating, and testing innovative models of care in the areas of perinatal care, sexual and reproductive health care, newborn care, and primary care.
• Disrupt the racist and oppressive systems that impact access to the midwifery profession and midwifery care to improve perinatal outcomes for all communities.
• Be accountable for professional growth, evaluation of practice, and developing and advancing equitable policies supporting the above-described philosophy and mission.

Objectives

The specific objectives of the Nurse-Midwifery track are to prepare graduates who:

1. Provide competent, safe, high-quality, and culturally sensitive nurse-midwifery care to address the health needs of people from diverse backgrounds, experiences, family structures, and communities.*
2. Critically evaluate theories, concepts, and research findings from nursing, midwifery, and related sciences for translation into clinical practice.*
3. Use effective communication and leadership skills in interprofessional teams to promote positive change in the health care of people, newborns, and families.*
4. Use information systems and other technologies to improve the quality and safety of health care for people and newborns.
5. Apply principles of transformative justice and the social determinants of health in evaluating health policies and advocacy for the health of people and families in local, national, and international contexts.
6. Evaluate care systems by analyzing the needs of consumers, health care policies, service delivery and finance models, political contexts, and health indicators to increase access to health care for all people and their families in a variety of communities.

*These objectives are included in the graduate certificate program.

From 2014 to 2016, nurse-midwifery students were 100% female, 10% Hispanic/Latina, 5% Asian, 12% Black/African-American and 2% Native American/Alaska Native. Over the past five years (2012-2016), UW has graduated 44 nurse-midwives. Of these graduates, 37% are working in either rural, primary care shortage areas or with medically underserved populations (program objective 1).

In the most recent employer survey of new graduates, supervisors rated recent graduates of the nurse-midwifery program from 1 (Never) to 5 (Consistently) on program outcomes:

Two public events highlight nurse-midwifery DNP student scholarship:

1. DNP Final Poster Day is open to the public and scheduled in March yearly. Students present their DNP final projects, demonstrating accomplishments related to program objectives 2, 3, 4, and 6.
2. Student Scholarship Day is open to the public and allows the nurse-midwifery student to highlight their DNP projects.

A sample of recent Nurse-midwifery student projects include:

• Implementing Immediate Postpartum Long Acting Reversible Contraception (LARC)
• Meeting the Health Care Education Needs of Prostituted Individuals
• Development & Evaluation of Category II Fetal Heart Rate Training
• Patient and Provider Satisfaction with a Hospital-Based Doula Program
• MAKING WAVES: An Evidence-Based Waterbirth Protocol
• Tools to Improve Nursing Care in 2^nd Stage Labor