Jobs / Healthcare / 29-1161.00

Nurse Midwives

Diagnose and coordinate all aspects of the birthing process, either independently or as part of a healthcare team. May provide well-woman gynecological care. Must have specialized, graduate nursing education.

US jobs
7,920
Median wage
$134,040 a year
Job family
Healthcare

Can agents do the work of nurse midwives?

We read the evidence at the level of the job family, Healthcare:

  • Task levelPartialOne benchmark, from early 2025. On Stanford's MedAgentBench, where agents do clinical tasks in a simulated electronic health record, the best recorded model completes 69.7% of tasks (Claude 3.5 Sonnet v2). It has no maintained leaderboard, so newer models are not measured. No benchmark in our collection tests work with patients.
  • Project levelPartialOnly adjacent evidence. GDPval includes nurses among its 44 occupations. OpenAI reports that GPT-5.5's deliverables won or tied against professionals' work in 84.9% of comparisons across all occupations. No benchmark in our collection tests clinical work over days, such as managing a patient's care.

Benchmarks for the job family

These cover work in healthcare, not always this occupation's tasks.

  • GDPvalby OpenAIProject level · Wins plus ties against experts
    84.9%GPT-5.5 · Apr 2026
    Strong
  • GDPval-AAby Artificial AnalysisProject level · GDPval-AA Elo
    1846 EloClaude Opus 5.5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort, Default Fallback) · 23 Sep 2026
    Unrated
  • MedAgentBenchby Stanford UniversityTask level · Task success rate
    69.7%Claude 3.5 Sonnet v2 · 24 Jan 2025
    Strong

Typical tasks

From O*NET 31.0. Core tasks first. Few of these tasks have a benchmark today.

  • Provide prenatal, intrapartum, postpartum, or newborn care to patients.
  • Monitor fetal development by listening to fetal heartbeat, taking external uterine measurements, identifying fetal position, or estimating fetal size and weight.
  • Document patients' health histories, symptoms, physical conditions, or other diagnostic information.
  • Provide patients with direct family planning services, such as inserting intrauterine devices, dispensing oral contraceptives, and fitting cervical barriers, including cervical caps or diaphragms.
  • Prescribe medications as permitted by state regulations.
  • Develop and implement individualized plans for health care management.
  • Explain procedures to patients, family members, staff members or others.
  • Order and interpret diagnostic or laboratory tests.
  • Initiate emergency interventions to stabilize patients.
  • Document findings of physical examinations.
  • Educate patients and family members regarding prenatal, intrapartum, postpartum, newborn, or interconception care.
  • Perform physical examinations by taking vital signs, checking neurological reflexes, examining breasts, or performing pelvic examinations.
Other job titles for this occupation (8)

Certified Nurse-Midwife (CNM) · Nurse Midwife · Staff Certified Nurse Midwife · Staff Nurse Midwife · Direct-Entry Midwife · Postpartum Nurse · Postpartum RN (Postpartum Registered Nurse) · Registered Nurse Midwife