The maternity nurses who are skilled in communication, teaching, and observation of obstetric patients and their families, as well as in the physiologic and technical arts of maternity nursing, often have asked what nurse-midwifery preparation can give them that they don't already have. This is not an easy question to answer. The answer lies in the facts that the rich opportunity to acquire specific diagnostic skills and to use them freely in the responsible management of the normal obstetric course, may exist only erratically for many maternity nurses but are an integral part of practice for the nurse-midwife. Such practice reinforces her close communication with her patients. I have found this to be especially true in the labor and delivery and postpartum areas. Here, as a nursemidwife, I am able to combine the basic nursing art of careful observa-