University of Salford: Midwife's Role and NMC Code in Antenatal Care

This essay examines the role of the midwife in antenatal care, focusing on the four key themes of the NMC Code: prioritizing people, practicing effectively, preserving safety, and promoting professionalism and trust. It highlights the midwife's responsibilities in providing care, respecting patient choices, and ensuring patient safety. The essay emphasizes the importance of effective communication, cultural sensitivity, and ethical practice in the antenatal setting. It also discusses the midwife's role in providing emotional support, creating a safe environment, and upholding professional standards, including the need for continuous professional development and teamwork. The analysis considers the statutory, professional, and ethical frameworks guiding midwifery practice and how the NMC Code provides a structure for midwives' conduct and responsibilities, including the need for midwives to be aware of their limitations and seek assistance when needed. The essay underscores the importance of patient-centered care and the midwife's role in empowering women to make informed decisions about their health and well-being during pregnancy.

Running Head: ROLE OF THE MIDWIFE
ROLE OF THE MIDWIFE IN RELATION TO THE FOUR THEMES OF THE NMC
CODE
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author’s Note:

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The NMC code makes sure that the professional standards have the appropriate skills
to take care of people with integrity; respect; compassion and expertise safely. Four themes
are there to provide support, which are prioritise people; practise effectively; preserve safety
as well as promote professionalism and trust (NMC 2015). However, the paper has focused
on the role of the midwives within antenatal care relating to four themes of NMC code.
Antenatal care provides regular check up, which allows the midwife to avoid and treat
potential health risks and problems. Moreover, it helps to promote the health of pregnant
mothers and their babies to promote the healthy lifestyle. The paper focuses on key themes of
NMC code and the influence of the themes on the midwife in the antenatal setting. The paper
discusses the statutory; professional and ethical framework and the role of midwife in the
specific clinical setting. It is necessary to identify the principles on which the midwife is
based. For the midwife, it is necessary to work in partnership with the pregnant women with
dignity and respect.
The NMC code gives a structure to the midwives about their conduct as a healthcare
provider. The NMC code, which is the series of professional standards ensures that the care
professionals wok effectively all times. Midwife, the healthcare professional is trained so that
they can provide necessary support and care to the women during pregnancy; labour and
birth. However, the care differs in antenatal and postnatal stage. Hence, the midwife should
understand the duties and responsibilities accordingly while providing care to the pregnant
women. In this period of antenatal care, the midwife needs to examine and monitor the
expecting women. As mentioned by Taylor et al. (2019), the midwives must listen and
understand the need of people and respond accordingly. To achieve this, the midwives needs
to display few characteristics; for example, kindness; being compassionate and showing
respect. On the other hand, Oni et al. (2020) opined that it can be expected that the midwives
would not do any judgements and recognize diversity as well as choice of individuals. It is
their responsibility to encourage and empower the pregnant woman and their partners to take
active part in decision making process that helps the woman to convey her opinion about the
her requirement of care.
According to the first theme of NMC code, it is necessary to give priority to the
choice of people (NMC 2015). The midwife is responsible to assess the care requirements
and write down the care plan as well as provide emotional support; information and
reassurance to the expecting mother and partners. As mentioned by Regan et al. (2018), the
individual choice of giving birth can be varied due to the religious belief. The midwife needs

2ROLE OF THE MIDWIFE
to follow the domains of NMC code and should have good communication skills to provide
cognitive and psychological support. According to the NMC code (2015), the midwife needs
to recognise the individual choice and social beliefs; cultural beliefs as well as religious
beliefs. One of such example is Muslim faith. In UK, near about 3.3 million Muslim lives and
they have certain cultural and religious practices (Muslim Population in the UK Ons.gov.uk.
2018). The midwife should understand those and should not hurt those beliefs. While treating
the Muslim women, the midwife needs to be more careful during communication to adhere
the wishes of women. Midwife needs to be more sensitive and should understand the cultural
needs and beliefs. For example, while communicating with the Muslim woman, the midwife
should not allow Muslim men or chid as an interpreter.
While treating a woman, consent plays the vital role (England.nhs.uk. 2016). As the
midwives have a bludge of workload, they need to decide the priorities and divide work
among them accordingly. It is not possible to provide continuity of care all time; hence, it is
necessary to understand the needs of women and provide support accordingly. It is important
to work in partnership to provide care and the partnership can be done among the midwives;
between the doctors and midwives; between women and midwives and between midwives
and other healthcare workers. Corrigan (2017) stated that modern healthcare is focused on the
outcome oriented; cost effective and prescriptive practices. To provide care to women, it is
necessary to understand the cognitive, psychological and physical needs by making strong
relationship with them that can be possible with effective communication skills (Magdalena
and Tamara 2020). Bradfield et al. (2018) opined that midwives are the integral part of
healthcare system, which should have strong communication skills to develop the bonding
with patients. However, The NMC code of practice has some standards that the midwife
follows and actions can be taken if those standards are not followed.
According to the 2nd theme of NMC (2015) the midwife needs to practise effectively.
It should include sharing individual skills and knowledge and communicating clearly for the
benefit of care seekers. This can be done with the available evidence. The guidance of NMC
states the necessity of effective as well as appropriate communication. The communication
process should be clear and midwife needs to communicate clearly without hurting anyone so
that women and their partners as well as family members can understand the care process
clearly. Hence, the care provider should be careful while choosing language and terminology.
However, the medical terminology needs to be avoided as women may not understand those
terms sand feel uncomfortable and confusion. In this regard, Bernabeo et al. (2018) opined

3ROLE OF THE MIDWIFE
that body language plays extremely important role in the communication process. In the
antenatal setting, the learning of communication skill will be beneficial for both the care
providers and care seekers. In this process, the midwife will teach the woman to make her
own decision. In such cases, women need to understand the difference between diagnostic
tests and screening tests (Internationalmidwives.org. 2019). Midwife needs to convey both
positive and negative results of those tests.
The World Health Organisation has published six communication principles for
strategic communication (Who.int. 2017). The midwives need to follow those six principles
so that the women and family members can understand the explained details. This will help
the women to provide informed choice about own care. The personalised care plan can be one
of the best solution in such case that the midwife can share with other healthcare
professionals and the women. This will empower women and women can take proper
decisions about them, which reflects the health needs. This care plan will be up-to-dated with
the progress of pregnancy. With the strong body language, care providers needs to have good
listening skill also as well as they need to be careful about other non verbal skills like facial
expression; posture and gesture also. The skills are essential part to strengthen any
relationship. However, the midwife needs to make a quick assessment with several questions
for example regarding family history; medical history’ lifestyle and other relevant concerns
on the initial meet. In this initial stage, they should demonstrate the necessary things and
should do the essential blood tests with screening with the consent of women and family
members (Hunter et al. 2018).
The third theme of the NMC advises to preserve the safety. Kearney et al. (2017)
agreed and stated that in midwifery, patient safety is core of decision making. For which
reason, the midwives are provided training so that they can empower themselves and capable
to understand their set of skills; competency level and personal limitations. However, they
can ask for help to other healthcare providers when needed. As midwifery is responsible to
identify the safe as well as unsafe practices, it is necessary to get proper training to look after
women. Moreover, Daemers et al. (2017) advised that the midwife needs to report unsafe
practices and provide safety concerns against the unsafe practices. Midwives are accountable
for their own actions that are the formal and legal need of the NMC code and code of
practice. It is necessary for the patient safety; care and professionalism. According to the
NMC (2015), the healthcare providers are answerable for their own actions to the authority.

4ROLE OF THE MIDWIFE
It is the key responsibility to the midwife to provide patient safety and act within
limitation in the antenatal care setting. For example, the midwife needs to be careful while
collecting information during the first appointment booking. Midwife should collect all the
sensitive information consciously so that the women would not get anxious or confused to
share the confidential information. Moreover, midwife needs to create a safe and trustworthy
environment for the women so that they can feel safe. Among 100 pregnant women, 10 to 15
women are affected by mental health issues like depression and anxiety, which is harmful for
them and babies also (RC PSYCH ROYAL COLLEGE OF PSYCHIATRISTS. 2018).
Women become more vulnerable and anxious in pregnancy as it is one of the vital stages of
life and they experience various physical and psychological changes during this period
(England.nhs.uk. 2016). In such cases, midwife needs to be calm and help women so that
they can come out from their mental health problems to treat those correctly. Before referring
to the multidisciplinary team, midwife gathers all the necessary information and documents
them accordingly so that the team or the woman does not face issue in further treatment.
The final or fourth theme of Nursing and Midwifery Council is promoting
professionalism with trust. In this regard, Corrigan (2017) mentioned that the midwives
should uphold the professional image of the healthcare professionalism and they should
behave in such way also. By maintaining the professional image, healthcare professionals can
build a trustworthy relationship with the care seekers. By this way, the midwife can uphold
own knowledge and skills also and develop the care system by adding new methods and
techniques in the care setting. On the other hand, Magdalena and Tamara (2020) viewed that
midwife should always have up-to-date information available, which will improve the
knowledge and skills of the care provider to practice safely. With the gained knowledge and
skills, the midwife will be able to handle any critical cases with confidence to betterment the
career. The benefit of continued professional development ensures that the women in
antenatal care will always get the best promising care. The midwife needs to be kind and
polite towards the expecting women and their partner to gain trust.
As viewed by Taylor et al. (2019), midwife needs to review go through revalidation
process every three years and should have 35 hours of continued professional development
relevant to practice scope. However, different people have different view regarding
professionalism. For this, a new structure has been made; that is ‘Enabling Professionalism in
Nursing and Midwifery Practice’. This framework aims highlighting the application of
professionalism on a working day. NMC with other professional organisation has supported

5ROLE OF THE MIDWIFE
the framework to ensure the responsibilities of nurses and midwives. This framework has
given idea about the behaviour of midwife to uphold the professional standards. The
framework helps the midwife to make a strong relationship with care seekers effectively and
safely. The midwives should have positive attitude always as they have some professional
responsibilities to interact with the care receivers. In such case, teamwork also plays vital role
to provide the best care in antenatal setting. The theme encompasses a value set, which is
critical to elevate the patient care quality and nursing practices.
Based on the above discussion, it can be said that MNC code has provided outline of
professional standards needed to fulfil the midwife role. With the registered standards, the
patients get clear idea about the role of midwives, who are appointed for their care. The
midwife upholds the code of NMC within their competence limit. The four themes reflect the
required characteristics that the midwife needs to possess and display. A midwife has various
roles in the healthcare setting; they have to play the role of care giver; counsellor; educator
and researcher. They also advocate women. By following the professional standards of MNC
code, the midwife should behave professionally and be accountable to preserve women safety
of expecting women and unborn baby. This is very important that NMC code should be
adhered to maintain the professionalism as well as public safety. This will ensure that the best
potential outcomes can be achieved on every occasion.

6ROLE OF THE MIDWIFE
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