AWHONN, the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses, is the professional organisation for nurses caring for women, newborns and families. It was founded in 1969 as the nurses' association of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and became independent under its present name in 1992.
That history explains its position. It began inside a physician organisation and left it, which is a common pattern in the professionalisation of nursing specialties.
The staffing standards
Its most consequential publication is its nurse staffing standards for perinatal care, first issued in 2010 and revised since. They set expected nurse-to-patient ratios through each phase of a hospital stay: obstetric triage, antepartum care, labour, vaginal and caesarean birth, recovery after anaesthesia, mother and baby care, and neonatal intensive care.
This is unusual and worth noting. Outside the four states with legislated ratios, almost nobody publishes numbers by phase of care. Where these standards are used they function as a professional benchmark that a nurse or a manager can point to, and they are built on acuity and census rather than a single fixed figure. See nurse staffing and patient outcomes and patient acuity and staffing systems.
Other work
The association publishes practice guidance across obstetric and neonatal nursing, including on fetal monitoring, neonatal skin care and postpartum haemorrhage, and runs a framework on respectful maternity care. It also publishes a peer-reviewed journal and runs certification-adjacent education, with the credentials themselves awarded by a separate corporation.
Its advocacy concentrates on maternal mortality and morbidity, an area where the United States performs poorly against comparable countries and where nursing surveillance in the hours after birth is one of the few interventions with clear evidence behind it.
Related
- Nursing organizations
- Nurse staffing and patient outcomes
- Patient acuity and staffing systems
- American College of Nurse-Midwives
- Nurse midwifery
Sources
- AWHONN. Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses, for the 1969 founding and 1992 renaming. Accessed September 9, 2026.
- Staffing standards executive summary. AWHONN, for the ratios by phase of care and the 2010 first edition. Accessed September 9, 2026.
- Perinatal staffing initiative. AWHONN. Accessed September 9, 2026.