Innovation in Nursing; Nurse Practitioner in Midwifery(NPM)-The Future of Indian Nursing

Abstract

Nursing innovation is a fundamental source of progress for health care systems around the world. According to a report by ICN (2009), innovation in nursing applications is extremely important for improving health, preventing diseases, describing and avoiding risk factors, developing healthy life standard attitudes because innovation helps updated knowledge, method and services be invented and discovered by the institutions. Innovation starts with a good idea, but it is much more than that. It also refers to the process of turning that good idea into something that can be used, something that is implementable and achievable, and hopefully, will bring about better health promotion, disease prevention and better patient care [4]. Considering the necessity for trained human resources to give quality care to 30 million pregnancies each year in India and at a similar time recognizing the challenges earlier, Government of India has proposed an alternate model of service provision for strengthening reproductive, maternal and neonatal health services by nurse practitioners in midwifery through Midwife Led Care Units (MLCUs). The ‘Guidelines on Midwifery Services in India’ set transformative change must be at the center of midwifery education. The ‘Midwifery Services Initiative’ aims to create a new cadre of midwives titled “Nurse Practitioner in Midwifery” (NPM) who are skilled in accordance with ICM competencies, knowledgeable and capable of providing compassionate women centered, reproductive, maternal and new-born health services (RMNCH) and to develop an enabling environment for integration of this cadre into the general public health system so as to achieve the SDGs for maternal and new-born health (MoHFW, 2018). The Nurse Practitioner in Midwifery (NPM) will be responsible for promotion of health of women throughout their life cycle, with special focus on women during their childbearing years and their new-born's. She will be responsible for providing respectful maternity care during preconception, pregnancy, childbirth, and post-natal period including the care of new born. Introduction of NPM will help to strengthen our health work force, and will go a long way in addressing the country’s core need of strengthening human resources for health, and it will empower the nurse practitioner in midwifery as leaders, in tandem with the global movement of role expansion and empowerment of nurse midwives.