Midwifery (Hons) University of Northampton

Overview

The Midwifery BSc programme offered by the University of Northampton, is approved by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) and accredited as Baby Friendly Gold by UNICEF and has been designated to contribute towards achieving the following United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Good Health and Wellbeing and Gender Equality.

Course Details

Completing the BSc Midwifery degree will give you the following skills and experience:

• you will be able to confidently lead the role of the midwife, employing a sound knowledge base through engagement with the research process and utilising a range of core and specialist midwifery skills;
• you will be able to build effective working relationships with other professionals and partnerships with women, pregnant persons and their families;
• provide holistic, woman-centred midwifery care promoting physiological processes, to include organising care for a small caseload;

• question and explore current practice to enable the continuous evaluation and development of effective midwifery care.

Throughout your midwifery course you will develop and enhance your clinical skills within all areas of maternity care (labour ward, home births and birth centres). You will also have the opportunity to experience care in a variety of multi-disciplinary settings and non-maternity settings which could include the special care baby unit (SCBU), Gynaecology, theatres and high dependency units (HDU).

Each of the three years of the course comprise periods of theory and applied practice within semesters and you will be placed at the NHS Trust sites to gain practical experience:

• Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust
• Kettering General NHS Foundation Trust
• Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust 

Placements are organised by a central placements department at the University of Northampton and a designated Midwife at your allocated NHS Trust host site.

If you are studying the Midwifery course, you can expect to work and study for 37.5 hours per week over 45 weeks of the year 50% of your time will be dedicated to learning in clinical practice and the other 50% will be led by the lecturing team at the University using an active blended learning approach.  This means you will have guided online theoretical study followed by discussion on its application to practice in face-to-face sessions with midwifery lecturers. 

Practice hours when in placement will be on average 30 hours per week but may vary from week to week to accommodate shift patterns and continuity of care working.

For some placement periods in Years two and three, these may increase to 37.5 hours per week in order to prepare you to meet requirements of the regulator, the NMC, to ensure you are prepared for professional practice.

Career Opportunities

Initially after a period of preceptorship training and post-registration clinical experience, you can progress into fields such as: 

• clinical leadership

• specialisms such as bereavement, teenage pregnancy and infant feeding, 

• education
• research.