Table 2.

High-resource country profiles of midwifery roles and scope

	Australia	Canada	Netherlands	United Kingdom
Pregnancy services provider	Through antenatal clinics with midwives and/or doctors, midwifery group practices, caseload midwifery services, aboriginal health services and birth centres depending on availability. In rural areas, GPs provide pregnancy care	Physicians attend majority (90%) of births. Midwifery became regulated in 1993 and midwives attend an average of 10% of births in 8 out of 10 provinces and one territory (2.8–22%)	Organized in two echelons: midwife-led care and obstetrician-led care. Professionals in these echelons work alongside and complementary to each other. About 89% of pregnant women start with a first antenatal visit to the community midwife. At the start of delivery, about 50% of pregnant women are under the responsibility of a midwife	Antenatal care is primarily provided by midwives in antenatal clinics in the hospital or community settings and sometimes shared with GPs. Women may choose to give birth at home in an MLU or an obstetric unit
Midwife-led models	Publicly funded programmes across the country where women receive care by midwives during prenatal and postpartum phases and can plan to give birth with midwives at home or midwives at the local hospital	Models of care differ across provinces, but in most midwives work in small teams or solo to care for women in midwife-led, community-based office practices. Midwives attend births in all available settings	Midwives can choose to work as a primary care midwife providing full scope of care for women experiencing an uncomplicated pregnancy. Alternatively, midwives can choose to work within the hospital system as a clinical midwife under the responsibility of the obstetrician	All women have a midwife and function at public health facilities (birth in midwifery-led units within hospitals, alongside units or community settings)
Midwife Education	Three-year direct-entry programme (Bachelor of Midwifery); 1-2 years graduate programme after nursing (Graduate Diploma or Masters); 4-year double degree (nursing and midwifery)	Four-year programme including 3 years of continuity care model clinical placements; 3-4 days a week of antenatal clinic and intrapartum and postpartum care	Four-year midwifery degree, at higher professional education	Three-year direct-entry programme or 18-month programme after nursing (50% of this time is spent in clinical practice); Midwives are trained to the full scope of practice at the point of registration. Additional training is required to prescribe