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Midwifery

View the employability skills

A graduate in midwifery typically will have the ability to:

  • act on own initiative including initiating the action of other professionals and know when to refer
  • recognise own learning needs and independently advance learning and understanding
  • reflect on and modify behaviour in the light of experience and act where necessary
  • apply effective skills in team building, group activities and organisation of others, liaising and negotiating across organisational and professional boundaries and differences of identity or language
  • handle interpersonal and intrapersonal conflict constructively and be aware of effective strategies for coping with personal stress
  • understand and manage changing situations and respond flexibly
  • challenge unacceptable practices responsibly based on the critical review and dissemination of research and audit findings
  • justify practice in the light of risk management frameworks and clinical governance
  • exercise judgement and responsibility based on available evidence to work with women in achieving the best possible birth outcomes
  • apply IT, numeracy, verbal and written communication skills
  • apply the principles of health promotion and education to midwifery practice.

Midwives work with women and their families to assess their needs and to determine and provide programmes of care and support prior to conception and throughout the antenatal, intranatal and postnatal periods. They focus on providing holistic care which respects individual needs, choices and cultures in a variety of contexts. Legislation enables midwives to carry out their role autonomously, while expecting them to work in partnership with others and across professional boundaries when this is in the best interests of women and their families. Midwives work in and across a wide range of settings, from women's homes to acute hospitals. They also make a significant contribution to the wider public health agenda.

Midwifery is an applied academic subject, underpinned by the human biological sciences and the social sciences, in particular psychology and sociology. Its mastery requires proficiency in a range of cognitive, affective and psychomotor skills. It is the integration of these underpinning elements which establishes the basis for midwives to provide care which is woman centred and focused on the premise that childbirth is normally a natural, physiological and important event in women's lives. The midwife's role also centres on the woman in the family context. The care of the family during childbearing is central to the definition of the discipline.

The pre-registration midwifery programmes of education and training are built around university and practice-based learning. These two elements enable students to develop autonomy and confidence and to emerge as competent practitioners with the capacity to work effectively in women's homes, hospital, community clinics or other settings as part of a broadly based health and social care team.

To check the growing range of resources produced by the Subject Centre to support employability and the use of this profile (including the Skills and Attributes map) go to www.health.heacademy.ac.uk.

This profile, produced in 2004, is based on the QAA benchmark to be found at www.qaa.ac.uk/academicinfrastructure/benchmark/honours/default.asp.


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