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Women's Health Care Studies Programs
Meet our Team

Kate McHugh, MSN, CNM
 

Kate graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing Degree. After some years experience as a labor/delivery and neonatal intensive care nurse, she completed the St. Louis University Nurse-Midwifery Program.

Kate has taught at the graduate level since 1980 with faculty appointments at Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, Case Western Reserve University, and Philadelphia University. She served as the educational program director of the Frontier School of Midwifery and Family Nursing’s Community-Based Nurse-Midwifery Education Program (CNEP), Philadelphia University, and the Institute of Midwifery, Women and Health, all programs designed for distance learners. She was the Executive Director and a Founding Board Member of the Institute of Midwifery, Women and Health.

At Penn Nursing Kate has two roles: faculty member in the Women’s Health Care Program and Director of the Teacher Education Program. Kate teaches the antepartum course and the intrapartum/postpartum/newborn course. In addition, she is writing a doctoral dissertation for the Doctoral Program in Social Welfare at the University of Pennsylvania.  

Recently, Kate has begun to focus on issues related to the midwifery profession and maternal health outcomes in other countries.  In the last two years she has traveled to Japan, Nigeria, and Guyana as a consultant and teacher.

In May of 2004, Kate was a recipient of the ACNM Foundation's Excellence in Teaching Award. She has represented the American College of Nurse-Midwives at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development panel looking at Sudden Infant Death Syndrome prevention efforts.  Kate is involved in legislative issues affecting licensed midwives in Pennsylvania, focusing on the effort to win prescriptive authority.

Kate practiced clinically as a nurse-midwife for many years in a variety of health care settings including a freestanding birth center, tertiary care settings, and community hospitals. She was project director for a federally funded project to provide midwifery care to women with substance use problems and has an ongoing interest in the issue of addiction.

During her years with the CNEP program Kate focused extensive efforts on preparation and development of faculty, especially clinical preceptors. With Penny Armstrong CNM, MSN, she developed the program Forming Partnerships in Clinical Education: a preceptor workshop, which trained over 800 nurse-midwives nationally. She has a particular interest in issues related to educational administration, innovative methods of graduate education, and distance education. In her midwifery scholarship, she has contributed many chapters on newborn care to the textbook, Varney’s Midwifery.