About 3,000 babies entered this world thanks to midwife Mrs. Phyllis Lynn.
At age 73, Mrs. Lynn is still going strong as the director of Nurse Midwifery Services at Maimonides Medical Center. She is celebrating 54 years and counting in healthcare.
In Jamaica, in the mid-60s while working as an RN staff nurse on the post-partum unit at the University College Hospital, Lynn was offered a position as a nurse manager. The caveat: she had to become a midwife.
“I realized I met my calling in women’s health,” she says after completing her midwifery education in 1967 at University College of the West Indies. There was no looking back.
The following year, she migrated to the U.S. and in 1974 was re-certified as a certified nurse midwife at SUNY Downstate.
At Interfaith Medical Center, for six years, Mrs. Lynn worked as head nurse in charge of Labor and Delivery.
This caring, experienced, midwife reassures women that childbirth is a natural phenomenon.
In 1993, Maimonides began a midwifery service, led by Mrs. Lynn. Initially alone, she brought all her knowledge and skills to Borough Park. Over the last 12 years, the midwifery service at Maimonides has grown into a successful service with 12 full-time certified nurse midwives.
In her long career, Mrs. Lynn credits her midwifery tutor Sister Barbara in guiding her, as well as, Dr. Morton Schifer, the chairman of the Department of OB/GYN at Brooklyn-Jewish Hospital/Interfaith Medical Center.
“He sent me to further my education in gynecology and family planning, and helped me realized that to become a successful provider, you have to be able to provide health care to women from preconception to menopause, which I now do,” she says.
