The Role of Midwives - Essay Example

The NHS Modernization Agency, which was just recently superseded by NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, was established to facilitate the modernization of health services and the improvement of the patients' experiences and outcomes of health care. The establishment of the Agency was of course the establishment of specific themes, which in turn, were targeted towards NHS' goals (NHS, 2006). The establishment of such themes is expected to make an impact in everything which are affiliated with health care, most specifically the patients and the workers.

The midwives, being medical practitioners themselves are affected by these themes both in positive and negative ways (NHS, 2006). One of the themes emphasized by the NHS Modernisation Agency was that about the Workforce. Based on this theme, the attempt to modernize the Health Care system would entail the effective use of staff, the attraction of staff, and the retention and development of staff. Under the effective use of staff, it is important for the Health Care system to meet the changing demands imposed by the erratic nature of the field by achieving a balance between the workers' skills and service demands (NHS, 2006).

According to NHS (2006), to achieve balance, flexibility and skills are necessary for their workforce. These requirements put the status of midwives in both the advantaged and disadvantaged. As the role of midwives is concentrated on child delivery concerns, this puts them in the advantageous position as well as gives them specialization in which aspect of health care, they are supposedly the only ones sought after. If "balance," is more a function of skill than flexibility, then the power to handle delivery becomes exclusive only to physicians, midwives, and no one else's.

However, the opposite is true otherwise. Flexibility entails the knowledge, experience, trust, and ability to perform and be responsible to do more than a single duty. It is not enough that a person has the knowledge and ability to perform duties. It is necessary that the person has the experience and has the legal responsibility for possible miscalculations. This is what is lacking in the midwife profession. If only "balance" is a matter of specialization, knowledge, and ability, midwives could be having the advantage over other health care professionals.