Building Bridges from Birth Center to Hospital: Transfer and Collaboration

The process of transfer from birth center to hospital presents challenges for the transferring woman and providers at both sites. The Model Practice Guidelines for Transfer from Home or Birth Center to Hospital will be presented. A model of collaboration between a birth center and a University Hospital based Family Medicine Maternal and Child health service will be presented. Case studies will be offered from both a CPM and CNM center.

*Re-watch this live-streamed session from the American Association of Birth Centers Birth Institute

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Opening Remarks

Dr. Susan Stone, DNSc, CNM, FACNM, FAAN – President of Frontier Nursing University

Susan Stone, DNSc, CNM has been working in field of reproductive health care for women for over 30 years. She has been an advocate for women seeking an emotional and physically satisfying childbirth. Her career began as an obstetrical nurse where she facilitated the opening of birthing rooms and introduced rooming in and sibling visits in a small rural community. She led the development of five outreach clinics in rural areas where women could receive pre-natal and post partum care in their own communities. She then pursued education as a certified nurse-midwife through the Frontier Nursing University’s (FNU) distance education program. She practiced full scope midwifery care at Bassett Health Care in Cooperstown, New York from 1991 through 1998. During this time she precepted many nurse-midwifery students and worked to develop outreach clinical education sites for nurse-midwifery students in Upstate New York. Believing that having more nurse-midwives would ultimately serve the goal of satisfying birth experiences for women, she shifted her focus to the education of nurse-midwives. She relocated to Kentucky and served as the Program Director of the Frontier nurse-midwifery education program. She was appointed as President and Dean in 2001. She put the school on a trajectory that allowed it to achieve accreditation as a graduate institution offering Doctor of Nursing Practice and Master of Science in Nursing degrees with a focus in nurse-midwifery, family nursing and women’s health care. During her tenure as President the School grew from 200 students to the current enrollment of over 1500 students. Believing that there are many nurses living in rural and underserved areas who would pursue graduate education as nurse-midwives and nurse practitioners if they did not have to leave their communities, the focus of the University is to offer distance education programs using the student’s community as the classroom. The University currently has students located in every state in the United States and in seven foreign countries. Dr. Stone continues in the role of FNU President with a goal of improving health care for families through increasing the number of well prepared nurse-midwives and nurse practitioners.

Speakers

Larry Leeman, MD, MPH

Larry Leeman, MD, MPH is Professor of Family and Community Medicine, and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. He is the director of UNM Family Medicine Maternal Child Health clinical service, co-medical director of University Hospital Mother Baby Unit and Level Two Nursery, and Medical Director for the Milagro Perinatal Substance Abuse program. He is the medical consultant for the Dar a Luz Birth Center in Albuquerque. As a faculty member at UNM he has worked for fifteen years as a consultant for home birth and birth center midwives and helped care for their clients who have required hospital transport. He has presented grand rounds for the UNM Ob/Gyn and Family Medicine Departments on Home Birth with a focus on facilitating improved collaboration from home to hospital. He is the Managing Editor of the Advanced Life Support in Obstetrics (ALSO) course.

Maureen Darcey, CNM

Maureen is a birth center pioneer. For thirty years, she has advocated at the local, state, and national levels for midwifery and the birth center model of care. She began her midwifery career at the Chatham Family Birth Center in Siler City, North Carolina in 1981. In 1995, she founded the Women’s Birth & Wellness Center in Chapel Hill where she prioritized making the birth center option available to the poor and other underserved populations. Under her leadership, the center has grown to over 450 births annually and is a model for birth centers nationwide.

Heike Hornsby, LPM, CPM – Co-Owner of Puget Sound Midwives & Birth Center

In 1993, Hornsby graduated from the Seattle Midwifery School (now Bastyr University) and became a Licensed Midwife. By 1999, she had become the co-owner of the Puget Sound Birth Center. Here she now works closely with a skilled team of midwives to provide family-centered care by helping to ensure optimal health for a mother and her child, encouraging a trust in the process of birth and helping to ease this joyful transition for families.