Make no mistake, midwifery is an extremely rewarding but difficult career path. It will be the busiest three years of your life, what with university lectures, placements and exams coinciding. But in the end, you’ll come out a certified nurse midwife, that will be fully trained to look after many women through pregnancy, birth and after. If you’re not put off by hard work, enjoy looking after people, and love babies, a midwife course may be right up your street. But first we’ll give you an insight into what to expect when training to be a midwife.
Qualifications
How to become a midwife, I hear you ask? Well it is necessary to complete a three-year midwifery degree. This is unless you are already a registered nurse, in which case a shorter course is offered instead, taking eighteen months to complete. You can also take a nursing bachelors degree and then progress on to a midwifery graduate degree. Usually universities and colleges will focus on your high school grades and extra curricular activities when you apply for these types of midwifery and nursing courses.
Be Ready for Long Working Days
Being a midwife is a demanding and unique role. As a student midwife, you will spend most of your time on placement learning straight from certified nurse midwives. You will experience all areas of midwifery, such as postnatal, delivery and antenatal, working with these women throughout their pregnancy and looking after both them and their babies after birth. As well as placements, you will also be required to attend lectures for a few hours a week, and will also need to complete assignments and exams. So be prepared for long working days; some days you may be working nightshifts then will have to attend a lecture the next morning! This career path is not for the faint hearted!
Skills You Need to Succeed as a Student Midwife
As a midwife you will need to be able to keep a level head in pressurized situations, in depth knowledge in midwifery, time management skills and a passion for the job. Obviously these are only the basic skills needed, there are many more required, but with these four skills you have a bigger chance of success. The job is long and complicated, as is the theory when learning it, but the main thing is, if you love what you are doing, it will really push you forward to the goal you desire.
Pay
When you have completed your degree and have become a fully certified nurse midwife, the average expected salary is $96,970 per year. And, nurse midwives are in high demand and are expected to be for the foreseeable future.
Future Career Prospects
Depending on whether you have taken a nursing degree first and then a graduate midwifery degree or a bachelor’s in midwifery, your career aspects can be very different. For a nursing degree with a specialism in midwifery you could be doing anything from general nursing to pediatrics and midwifery. Alternatively, coming out of a midwifery degree you could be working in postnatal, and antenatal hospital wards, or within GP surgeries.
Just remember being a certified nurse midwife is a demanding career path, but in the end, it’s very rewarding.
