The ‘Dream Team’ for sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn and adolescent health: an adjusted service target model to estimate the ideal mix of health care professionals to cover population need

Table 2 Cadre categories and ordering from lowest to highest salary

Cadre category	Ordering from lowest to highest paid
Auxiliary midwives and nurse midwives^a	1 (lowest)
Midwives and nurse-midwives^a	2
Medical officers^b	3
Doctors (generalists)	4
Doctors (obstetricians/gynaecologists)	5 (highest)

^aFor the purpose of this paper nurse-midwife relates to the education trajectory of becoming a nurse first and then qualifying as a midwife, allowing for deployment in many parts of the health system. The decision to merge the nurse-midwife and midwife cadres was taken because in some countries there is no distinction between the two, and in other countries they have similar or identical competencies. In countries with a clear distinction between the roles and responsibilities of midwives and nurse-midwives, it may be more appropriate to treat them as two separate cadres
^bNot all countries have a medical officer cadre, in which case the tasks allocated to medical officers in this analysis would be allocated to a generalist doctor cadre

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