There are a variety of career options for CNMs from clinical practice, education, administration or research to involvement in policy and legislative affairs. A career as a CNM offers many roads to personal accomplishment and professional recognition. For example:

• You can provide primary healthcare to women for comprehensive gynecologic and maternity care.
• You can use your knowledge and skill to help women to realize personal fulfillment with their labor and birth. Also, through the art of midwifery you reduce the need for high-tech interventions for most women. But, when necessary, you are trained to make the latest in safe scientific procedures available to assist a normal birth process.
• You can share your professional healthcare abilities by teaching at a university in schools of nursing, public health, medicine, and allied health.
• You can conduct clinical research on such key topics as the safety, health benefits and cost-effectiveness of non-medical and medical interventions; maternal and infant healthcare; HIV/AIDS; new contraceptive methods; breast-feeding; and gynecological care.
• You will have the authority in most states to write prescriptions for many of the medications and health care products needed in your practice.
• You can become active in local and national legislative affairs and be a policy maker for health care reform.
• You can empower women to take more active roles in making decisions about their healthcare and lifestyle habits.
• You can play a key role in reducing the maternal and infant death rate both in this country and around the world.
• You can use your business and administrative skills in directing a nurse-midwifery practice in a community, birth center or hospital.
• You will have the opportunity to work in collegial relationships with physicians, nursing specialists, and other healthcare professionals.

As a CNM, you can choose any one or a combination of these career paths to design a career that is optimal for you. For more information on how to become a midwife, please visit the education section of ACNM's web site.