Midwife or OB-GYN?

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midwife or OB-GYN?

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Hello! I am currently a junior in college forced to make a tough decision. I have to decide to fully pursue my dream of becoming an OB-GYN or to give up my dream and become a nurse-midwife instead.

A little background: My passion is in women's health. I know without a doubt that I have to work within the field in order to be happy. However, my GPA is currently a 3.1. My adviser said that it is tough, but doable if I get 4.0 every semester until I graduate and possibly go an extra year in order to spread out the rest of my classes. That would mean that would be applying for med school when I am 24. I know in the scheme of things, that isn't that old, but I want a ton of kids, which just isn't realistic if I wait until I am done training after I am 32. With that being said, I feel like I could also be happy as a midwife. My understanding is that they basically do everything that an OB-GYN would do expect for surgery.

Part of me feels like this is the smart choice. I could be done with my training by the time I am 25 and have a career and a large family. The other part of me is heartbroken for giving up my dream so easily and fears that the limited abilities of a nurse-midwife would not be enough for me.

I don't know what to do, and I am in a tough situation, as I have to decide within the next day as classes start and I have to switch from pre-med requirements to pre-nursing.

So here is where you come in: I need help. How do you view midwives? Is there a certain stigma that perpetuates among doctors regarding midwives? Is it worth it to keep fighting for med school when I might not get in? How much family time do you have? If you could do it all over again, would you chose something that is basically the same thing with a limited scope and save yourself the years of training?

Thank you for your time and responses. I truly appreciate it.

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If you just want patient interaction and want to manage relatively straightforward labor and delivery, then go for being a midwife. It is a less rigorous path academically speaking and from a training perspective. You will get the opportunity to see patients in the office and also manage some labor and delivery. Limitations include not managing more complex obstetric cases in the ante partum period and peri partum period. You generally won't have the training to perform operative deliveries and where I trained the midwives weren't able to/were not comfortable repairing 3rd and 4th degree lacerations. For the sake of perspective, during my fourth year of residency, I got called in by a midwife after a delivery to repair a third degree laceration because her covering attending was unavailable. This was a midwife who was fairly experienced and had been practicing for 15+ years.

In addition, if you are not interested in operative gynecology including office procedures than being a mid wife would be fine. If you are interested in performing LEEPs, laparoscopy, etc than go the OB GYN route.

Also, your current GPA is not great and I don't know how realistic it is to get a 4.0 every semester. I just remember from my undergraduate days that it was something I only achieved in one semester after 3 years of actively trying for it.

There is no real stigma. Where I trained, the private OB groups hired several midwives to work in the office and act as first call on labor and delivery. They essentially acted as filters managing the uncomplicated labor/delivery and answering patient calls leaving attendings to manage more complex cases. This is not the same practice type everywhere, but just one example.
 
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