For this week’s Making the Rounds, we interviewed Hayden Meza, APRN, CNM, of the UK Midwife Clinic, about her favorite parts of her job – and what she finds most rewarding about empowering women and their families.
Tell us about your unique career path.
I knew that I wasn't going to work as a nurse in the U.S. [right after nursing school], so I moved to Uganda, and I served as a nurse there.
I learned so much there about just the resilience of the human spirit. I also really, really just fell in love with the process of empowering women. You see what that looks like when women are disempowered.
It's so rewarding to see what happens when we do empower women to really own their healthcare and make decisions for their families.
What’s something people don’t know about midwifery?
We do pregnancy care, which is what most people know us for, but midwives are actually nurse practitioners. We’re trained in primary care, as well, which is surprising to some of our patients, but it's a really great avenue. We've gotten to know these moms in big life transitions, but we get to keep caring for them.
What types of patients do you see?
We have patients of every ethnicity. We have patients who don’t speak English as their first language. We provide care for patients who identify as lesbian or gay. We care for all types of patients at my clinic.
I really love the tag line of our national organization American College of Nurses Midwives. Their tagline is “listen to women.”
Watch our full interview with Meza.
