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The field of nursing provides many different types of work. Maternity ward nurses, like all registered nurses, have completed necessary educational and licensure requirements, but at some point their career paths diverged from providing standard nursing care to working solely in hospital maternity wards or birthing centers.
What Does a Maternity Nurse Do?
Maternity nurses are one of the first people newborn babies meet as they provide care for newborns after delivery. However, maternity nurses have many other functions as well, including:
Maternity nurses generally have more than one patient or baby under their care and they generally work longer shifts than standard eight-hour days.
What Are the Steps to Becoming a Maternity Nurse?
To become a maternity nurse, you must earn either an associate or bachelor's degree. Diploma programs are offered at some hospitals, but there are very few diploma programs in the U.S. You'll also have to take the national accreditation exam, called the NCLEX-RN. Bachelor's degree programs typically take four years to complete. Some nurses choose to earn a master's degree, which can add an additional one to two years of study time.
Nurses who earn associate's degrees and find work in the field of nursing may advance their careers through accelerated associate's-to-bachelor's degree programs. Some employers may reimburse nurses who decide to do this, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports. There are many online nursing degree programs that offer this type of continuing education, as well as accelerated master's degree programs.
Many maternity nurses find work as registered nurses after graduating from nursing school and passing the NCLEX-RN. From there, they build the required clinical nursing and communication skills needed to move into work in the maternity ward, where they train under the supervision of highly skilled professionals. However, some hospitals have training programs in place to cull maternity nurses from the ranks of registered nurses on staff.
Nursing schools provide a broad scope of education in the field of health care and general education. General education coursework for nursing degree programs could include many of the following classes:
Nursing-specific coursework could cover many of the following topics:
Other coursework could include study in the management of information and use of computers to document and record information about patients. Nursing students are also required to complete a certain amount of supervised clinical care in a hospital or other care facility.
How to Become a Great Maternity Nurse
Maternity nurses should be composed--the labor and delivery process can be extremely stressful for some mothers and good maternity nurses should be able to handle this extra stress without becoming overwhelmed. Other traits that a good maternity nurse should have are attention to detail when taking and recording vital statistics and compassion.
Maternity nurses also should cherish the experience of pregnancy and child birth. For most mothers, it is one of the most special times of their lives and they want to share the experience with a maternity nurse who is as excited about the birth of their child as they are.
Because of their special skills and advanced education, maternity nurses typically make more than registered nurses. Salary.com reports that nurse midwives, which include maternity nurses, earned average annual salaries between $83,273 and $98,465 in December of 2010. The lowest 10 percent of nurse midwives earned more than $76,839, while the top 10 percent took home $105,864 per year.
The BLS states that specialty-practice nurses, such as nurse midwives and maternity nurses, should be in extremely high demand in coming years, especially in rural areas and inner cities.
Great maternity nurses often are part of professional nursing organizations that promote continuing education and advance new practices in labor, birthing and infant care. Among the many professional organizations devoted to nursing are the National League for Nursing, American Nurses Association, American College of Nurse-Midwives and the American Society of Registered Nurses.
Resources for Maternity Nurses:
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