A midwife is a medical professional who has a nursing license, and is also licensed as a midwife with one additional year of education. In this globalization era, a midwife's role is increasing in importance for women and children's health care worldwide.

The primary purpose was to analyze midwifery education programs in Korea and other nations. The secondary purpose was to define strategies to improve midwifery education and practice, and to extend the role of a midwife women and children's health care in Korea.

1) The definition of a midwife and midwifery practice recognized internationally by World Health Organization (WHO) and International Council of Nurse Midwives (ICNM) was identified. 2) Midwifery education programs of Korea, U.S.A., Sweden, Australia, and Japan, were investigated and discussed. 3) Core competencies for the basic midwifery practice suggested by ACNM of the U.S.A. were reviewed as standard of midwifery practice. 4) As for the midwifery education system, a Masters degree program in a college of nursing is suggested. 5) The role of a midwife includes not only health care of childbirth women and newborn babies, but also a lifelong health care of women as well as her family and children.

An effort to extend the midwife's role and to improve service is imperative. The Laws/Acts related to midwives should be revised in regard to education, and practices, and the national examination for midwifery licensure needs revision to qualify for international approval. Also, midwifery curriculum and standards of practice need to be evaluated periodically, and an effective system needs to be established to renew midwife licenses.

A curriculum development model is presented to examine the processes necessary to develop new programs or evaluate existing programs within the philosophy of outcomes-based education in nursing, especially in the context of accreditation. The philosophy of outcomes-based education is to produce individuals who can demonstrate the evidence of competencies in designated areas of education. For nursing education, this means competencies in performing the role of professional nursing as defined by the profession and social needs at the beginning level upon completing a nursing program.

A curriculum development model has been developed analytically based on the literature and experiences.

A 10-step process framework incorporating the tenets of outcomes-based nursing education is illustrated.

This curriculum development framework can be applied in developing new educational programs in nursing or to evaluate and revise existing programs in anticipation of the accreditation process that is moving with a full force in such countries as Korea.

This study was done to develop standards for dementia care as a baseline for professional nurses to provide a framework for dementia care evaluation.

The dementia care standards were developed through a literature review and focus group discussions. According to the Delphi method, the data analysis was conducted using the Content Validity Index (CVI).

The final set of 18 standards on dementia care was developed through one round of CVI. The standards included four structural standards: 'Organization of nursing system', 'Operating system', 'Management of human resources', 'Management of material resources', 13 procedural standards: 'Advanced assessment', 'Nursing diagnosis', 'Nursing plan', 'Advanced nursing implementation', 'Evaluation', 'Education', 'Research', 'Consultation', 'Counseling and cooperation', 'Development of specialty', 'Utilizing resources', 'Nursing quality assurance', 'Ethics', and one standard concerning outcome ('Evaluation of nursing tasks in care of patients with dementia'). The final set of 55 criteria on care of patients with dementia was confirmed through two rounds of CVI. The final 171 indicators were confirmed through four rounds of CVI.

These dementia care standards provides a framework that allows registered nurses to clarify their roles and tasks in the care of patients with dementia and provides evaluation criteria.