Rebecca Benfield, CNM, Ph.D., FACNM
Associate Professor
Biography
Dr. Rebecca Benfield has practiced as a Certified Nurse Midwife for 28 years in a variety of settings including, a tertiary medical center, community hospital, freestanding birth center and Indian Health Hospital in Tuba City Arizona. She has precepted a variety of students including nursing and medical as well as interns and off service residents and directed Nurse-Midwifery Educational Programs at the University of Washington and East Carolina University.
Expertise
Specializing in Midwifery, Dr. Benfield holds experience in labor and child-bearing studies. Her interest areas have included the effects of anxiety and pain interventions (hydrotherapy and epidural analgesia) on uterine contractility, labor progress and stress related neurohormones.
Education Background
Dr. Benfield received her MSN from the University of Kentucky with a specialty in Nurse-Midwifery and a PhD in Nursing from the University of South Carolina.
Research/Scholarship
Dr. Benfield has conducted psychophysiological research with spontaneously laboring women at term gestation. Physiological instruments included: external uterine electromyography (EMG), intrauterine pressure catheter (IUPC), assays of plasma cortisol, epinephrine, norepinephrine, beta-endorphin, oxytocin, vasopressin, and urinary catecholamines and creatinine. Subjective measures of anxiety and pain included visual analogue scales.
Awards, recognitions, or group affiliations
Dr. Benfield was funded by NINR for a K01 Mentored Independent Research Scientist Development Award in 2003 entitled “The Effects of Hydrotherapy on Anxiety and Pain in Labor.” She has reviewed manuscripts for journals, including Biological Research for Nursing, Maternal and Child Health Journal, Journal of Midwifery and & Women’s Health, Gynecological Endocrinology, and International Journal of Nursing Studies and reviewed abstracts for the Society of Gynecologic Investigation, Council for the Advancement of Nursing Science and the American College of Nurse Midwives. Dr. Benfield has also been a panel grant reviewer for the National Science Foundation SBIR/STTR Medical Instrument Grant Proposals.
Currently, Dr. Benfield holds a Worker Without Compensation appointment at the VA Southern Nevada Health Care System. In 2022, she was inducted as Fellow of the American College of Nurse-Midwives and she is currently funded by Sigma Theta Tau for a research pilot study entitled “An Immersion Intervention for Symptoms of PTSD in Student Veterans."
Dr. Benfield received the 2024 Mary Ann Shah New Author Award from the Journal of Midwifery & Women's Health. The award recognized her significant contribution to midwifery and women's health in a research article as principal investigator, “Use of External Uterine Electromyography Across Stage I Labor.”