A new partnership between Pitt Nursing researchers and Pennsylvania midwives will address the alarming rate of maternal deaths due to accidental opioid poisoning by targeting the care provided by midwives.
Nancy Niemczyk, PhD, CNM, FACNM, assistant professor and director of Pitt Nursing’s DNP Nurse-Midwife Program, was awarded a $42,874 grant through the Jewish Healthcare Foundation for her project, Addressing barriers midwives face in caring for pregnant people with opioid use disorder: An engaged scholarship approach.
“I have served on Pennsylvania’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee since its inception about five years ago,” Niemczyk said. “During that time, more than half the maternal deaths we have reviewed have been from accidental opioid poisoning (overdose). This far overshadows any other cause of death. For years, we have made the same recommendations over and over again, but the rate of deaths hasn’t gone down. I decided that what I could do is work with midwives in Pennsylvania, who care for more than 16,000 pregnant people a year.”
Niemczyk said the first step is to identify the barriers midwives face in providing care for pregnant people with opioid use disorder. Through a collaborative effort with the Pennsylvania Association of Certified Nurse-Midwives, the study will employ a method called concept mapping to pinpoint these barriers.
“We will gather this information, and our steering committee of midwives around the state will develop a program to address these barriers,” Niemczyk said. “We hope to develop a concrete, actionable plan that will enable midwives to provide better care to the families they serve.”
Currently, there are 554 midwives in Pennsylvania who attend more than 16,000 births a year and provide prenatal and postpartum care for more. As about 7% of pregnant women report using opioids, this program could eventually impact about 1,100 women a year in Pennsylvania.