Obstetrical nursing

Obstetrical nursing, also called perinatal nursing, is a nursing specialty that works with patients who are attempting to become pregnant, are currently pregnant, or have recently delivered. Obstetrical nurses help provide prenatal care and testing, care of patients experiencing pregnancy complications, care during labor and delivery, and care of patients following delivery. Obstetrical nurses work closely with obstetricians, midwives, and nurse practitioners. They also provide supervision of patient care technicians and surgical technologists.

Obstetrical nurses perform postoperative care on a surgical unit, stress test evaluations, cardiac monitoring, vascular monitoring, and health assessments. Obstetrical nurses are required to possess specialized skills such as , nonstress tests, neonatal resuscitation, and medication administration by continuous intravenous drip.

Obstetrical nurses work in many different environments such as medical offices, prenatal clinics, labor & delivery units, antepartum units, postpartum units, operating theatres, and clinical research.

In the U.S. and Canada, the professional nursing organization for obstetrical nurses is the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nursing (AWHONN).

The National Certification Corporation (NCC) offers certifications for obstetrical nurses. These include RNC-OB (Inpatient Obstetrics), a certification that allows graduate nurses who have completed a bachelor's degree in the US or Canada, who want to expand into obstetrics. It is an online exam that costs around $325, and by the end of it they will gain themselves RNC-OB certificates. RNC-MNN (Maternal Newborn Nursing) is another online exam that is for certified registered nurses, who have completed their bachelor's degrees in Nursing and have gained experienced in the area of newborn nursing, and are wanting to gain a certification/qualification in the area. The test costs around $325 and they have a 90-day window to complete the actual exam and C-EFM (Electronic Fetal Monitoring). This certification like the other two is an online citification exam, for US and Canadian graduate nursing students. To do the online certification they are required to be either a licensed registered nurse, nurse practitioner, nurse midwife, physician, physician assistant, or paramedic, according to the US and Canada requirements.

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