More midwives, fewer MDs attending childbirth
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Key takeaways:
- Deliveries attended by MDs declined significantly since COVID-19.
- Deliveries attended by DOs, nursing midwives and non-nursing midwives increased after COVID-19.
SAN FRANCISCO — The number of deliveries attended by DOs, nursing midwives and non-nursing midwives has increased while use of standard MDs decreased in the past several decades, especially after COVID-19, a speaker reported.
“While MDs were already decreasing, they started decreasing at a greater rate post-COVID, and certified nurse midwives and other midwives increased at a greater rate post-COVID compared to before,” Brittney Wells, BS, a fourth-year medical student at Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha, Nebraska, said during a poster presentation at the ACOG Annual Clinical & Scientific Meeting.
Wells and colleagues used the CDC natality database to identify singleton deliveries from mothers aged 18 to 35 years from 2016 to 2019, defined as the pre-COVID-19 period, and 2020 to 2021, defined as the post-COVID-19 period. Researchers determined incidence of delivery attendants including MDs, DOs, nursing midwives and non-nursing midwives.
The rate of deliveries attended by MDs demonstrated statistically significant declines by 0.39% while deliveries attended by DOs increased slightly by 0.084%, and deliveries attended by nursing midwives and non-nursing midwives increased at greater rates of 0.044% and 0.204%, respectively, after the COVID-19 pandemic compared with before.
Despite the small rate change, the researchers noted, since COVID-19, there was an 11% increase in non-MDs attending deliveries, which was almost double that of the rate observed before COVID-19.
In addition, researchers observed an overall 6.28% decline in the number of births before vs. after COVID-19.
“We’re working on doing a full analysis looking at how this impacts health outcomes as well as looking at, eventually, the economy impacts as well as looking at different state regulations and how to support midwives moving forward,” Wells said.