Affording the Off Grid Life Archives

Are you interested in becoming a midwife?

Midwifery is a growing career across the world. As more women choose a midwife to assist them throughout their pregnancies, childbirth, and post-partum days, the demand for certified midwives and nurse-midwives is growing.

Some women are drawn to a career in midwifery as an extension of their nursing degrees or jobs. Others come to the profession without prior medical education. If you are interested in becoming a midwife, there are many courses leading to degrees and designations in midwifery. However the most important skills may not be taught in a textbook or through online courses. Communication, empathy with patients, quick decision-making skills, and organization are essential skills for a successful midwifery practice.

Communication Skills

Women who are pregnant often experience hormonal shifts that lead to enormous mood swings. The combination of hormones, morning sickness, and pregnancy brain (the term often used to describe forgetfulness during pregnancy) can make it difficult to focus on new information.

First time mothers and fathers have many questions regarding the medical aspects of what they are experiencing. The ability to answer sometimes difficult questions and explain complicated medical procedures in a clear manner is important.

One of the things midwives are commended for repeatedly by their patients is their willingness to ensure pregnant mothers understand what their bodies are going through.

A midwife must be skilled in assessing the best terminology and manner in which to share information with her patients.

Women of various backgrounds, education levels, and nationalities seek out midwives to birth their babies. Being able to communicate quickly and clearly with patients is an important skill to work on when becoming a midwife.

Empathy Skills

While communication skills are essential to sharing and teaching patients, a midwife must also be empathetic. One of the common complaints made about obstetricians, gynecologists, and other medical professionals are that they lack a good “bedside manner.” This refers to the soft skill of empathy, a crucial skill for anyone interested in becoming a midwife.

You may have mastered the formal training for midwifery, but if you lack empathy for your patient they will know it.

Empathy is “the identification with and understanding of another’s situation, feelings, and motives,” according to The Freeweb Dictionary. People who display empathy are often described as warm, loving, friendly, and/or maternal.

Pregnancy can be a time of anxiety, fragility, and nervousness for new parents, and a midwife’s empathy can go a long way to calming a nervous mother-to-be, especially one who is in labor.

Decision Making Skills

A midwife may be the primary caregiver in a woman’s pregnancy. While everyone hopes for a low-risk, uncomplicated pregnancy and labor requiring little or no intervention, that is not always the case.

Midwives are fully accountable for the well-being of their patients (big and little!), and must be prepared to make important, and sometimes, quick decisions on behalf of others. Typical decisions may include:

referring to a specialist during pregnancy for a pre-existing or new condition affecting the health of the mother and baby
a fast decision during labor to move from home to hospital
when to call an ambulance

A midwife must be confident in her ability to exercise quick decision-making skills based on her medical training and the situation at hand.

Organizational Skills

A midwife’s day can be long and unpredictable. Many midwives in North America operate in private practices, so in addition to seeing their patients and maintaining detailed records of visits, patient histories, and birth plans, midwives are responsible for the business aspect of their practices.

Some midwives work in collectives or with other types of birth attendants such as doulas or registered nurses. In Canada and the United States midwives’ salaries as employees are comparable to nurse-practitioners, while private practice midwives have a wide range of incomes.

Being able to juggle daily appointments, record-keeping, staying up-to-date with continuing education requirements, running a business, and above all, being on-call 24 hours a day for patients means midwives require great time-management skills.

Babies arrive all hours of the day or night, so always being prepared to attend a birth, and re-organize a day’s schedule is an essential skill of a midwife. Some of the continuing education and professional training for midwives include workshops on time management, record-keeping, and business organization skills.

Resources: Becoming a Midwife?

Canadian Association of Midwives

Midwifery Education Programs in Canada

International Conference of Midwives

Midwives Alliance of North America

American College of Nurse-Midwives

5 Tips to Produce More When You Get Paid to Write

The Pomodoro Method

This intense time-chunking productivity method involves working without any distractions and focusing on the writing task at hand for 25 minutes, then resting for five minutes. (If you are a WAHM like me with an assortment of children running around, this may only work when they are napping or not in the house.)

After four “Pomodoros,” you have earned a longer break. The Pomodoro technique was developed by Francesco Cirillo over 25 years ago to increase productivity through time management. It is based on the idea that working in short bursts with small breaks keeps the brain and body fresh, and therefore improves productivity, important to those of us who get paid to write.

While it is used by people for all kinds of work, the Pomodoro technique is very effective for writing. I found that after a week of working with this method (during my daughter’s nap time), not only did my writing speed increase, but I began to think of different writing assignments in terms of the number of Pomodoros it took to complete them. This allowed me to better compare my hourly writing income on writing assignments, and adjust my rates and client base accordingly.

Use Negative Reinforcement Theory

I discovered another great free online writing tool to keep me on track when I took part in Nanowrimo 2011, and it really worked for me.

Based on negative reinforcement theory, Write or Die encourages writers to write continuously, within a text box. Choose between writing for a set period of time, or achieving a word count. Before beginning a writing session it allows you to choose between the Gentle, Normal, or Kamikaze modes.

In the Gentle mode, you are reminded by a pop-up box to continue writing after a few seconds of keyboard inactivity. Normal mode exudes a harsh “unpleasant” sound while Kamikaze will start to delete the previously written words until you have completed your Write or Die Session!

While a $10.00 premium desktop downloadable version is available, the free online version worked just fine for me.

Use An Online Time Management Tool

Online time management tools are especially useful for writers who bill hourly. I use the free version of Toggl and recommend it for anyone who wants to work more efficiently. I’m actually using it right now as I create this post.

Track the time for each task you are working on, not just the pieces you get paid to write, but even the unpaid ones, and see how much time you really spend on Facebook or Pinterest, checking emails, surfing the Internet, etc.

The key to using Toggl effectively is to remember to hit “stop” when you leave your current task, and to be honest with yourself. A graph shows your total daily work production for the past week, and you can also access older reports. While the online version of Toggl is free, a paid version with a few more bells and whistles is also available.

Stick to a Daily and Weekly Writing Schedule

Experiment with writing at different times of the day. Some writers find they are most productive early in the morning, and can get more done before the sun rises than they can during the rest of the day. Others are slow to get started, and work well into the night. Use one of the methods above to identify when in the day you are most productive.

Try to schedule at least one day off a week to avoid burnout, and make sure you set aside time each week to send out applications for new writing gigs, marketing your web content writing, and taking part in an online writers community like the one at The Freelance Writers Den.

Limit Research Time

As a freelance online writer you need to write efficiently, effectively, and consistently. As you complete assignments for different clients you will get a feel for how long it should take you to research and write the piece. If you spend too much time researching or writing your freelance earnings will suffer.

When I used to get paid to write for the content mills, I allow myself fifteen minutes to find usable sources, and if the allotted time passed and I hadn’t found what I was looking for I released the title and moved on to something else. (Thankfully I replaced all my content mill work and low-paying Craigslist job board gigs with better paying clients over the past 18 months.) If you still write for the mills, choose subjects that you know inside and out to minimize time spent on research.

The key to boosting your productivity and earnings when you get paid to write is to research and write efficiently, time yourself, for each subject matter and client, calculate your hourly earnings, then replace the lower paying writing gigs with better paying ones that you can write well and quickly.

Please note: This post contains my referral links which helps support the work of this site.

Affording the Off Grid Life

Becoming a Midwife: Do You Have the Required Skills?