Midwifery

In this module you will deepen your knowledge and skills related to Public Health. In particular, you will explore how to provide effective care to those with additional complexity due to public health issues. This complexity may be due to physical, psychological, social, cultural or spiritual circumstances, and may be one or a number of these. You will learn to apply your knowledge to care for women across the continuum of pregnancy, labour, post-natal care and neonatal care.

Via use of specific case studies, and working together in small groups, you will explore the optimal care required to support your specific case - including multidisciplinary and multiagency working. By the end of this module, you will have the opportunity to propose an intervention embracing the principles of health promotion suited to the demographic group.

This double practice module will prepare you to care for women and their families when experiencing acute or life-threatening complications during childbirth.

You will exercise your critical thinking and problem-solving techniques when faced with childbirth emergencies, developing your own contribution as a member of the multidisciplinary team. You will participate in several rehearsed acute emergency situations which will equip you with the confidence needed to deal with emergency childbirth situations in whatever setting they may occur. This will ensure that maternal and neonatal wellbeing are at the centre of the care you provide.

As with the other practice modules, half of your learning on this module will take place in placement working with your Practice Supervisors to provide care to women and their families.

This double module will enable you to investigate the most common, as well as some of the less common, complications affecting the mother, fetus or newborn. You’ll build upon your existing knowledge of anatomy and physiology to analyse chronic and acute conditions affecting the mother, fetus or newborn. This new knowledge will give you the foundation to provide holistic care throughout the antenatal, intrapartum, postpartum and neonatal periods.

In this module, you will consider the role of the midwife as a clinical decision-maker in care. You’ll explore effective communication with the woman and the wider multidisciplinary team in more complex situations, learning how we work together to provide safe, compassionate and effective care.

You will use your developing knowledge and skills to determine best practice approaches to individualised, evidence-based care plans - including when women decline elements of their care. In addition, you will explore pharmacology and medications management, and how to safely and currently prepare and administer these in the clinical context. By the end of this module, you'll feel well prepared to care for women and childbirth in a clinical setting as part of the multidisciplinary team.

As with the other practice modules, half of your learning on this module will take place in placement working with your Practice Supervisors to provide care to women and their families.

This module gives you a wonderful opportunity to examine and experience care in a different community and setting. You will be able to design your own observational elective placement, with a focus on understanding your chosen community and exploring this in the context of your future role as a midwife. The variety of placements that previous students have undertaken is endless. These placements have included:

• maternity care providers in prisons
• local ambulance services
• fertility clinics
• mother and baby units
• even a health facility in sub-Saharan Africa!

You’ll develop your own experience with support from one of the teaching team.

In this module, you will further develop your research-based knowledge and skills which you were introduced to in Year 1. You will learn how to identify a research gap, and will then develop your own proposal to address this gap in knowledge. You’ll explore the relevant skills and techniques needed to do this, including developing new knowledge in methodology, theory, and research skills.

In this module, you will explore your own personal philosophy for midwifery practice. As you head into the final year of the course, you will look towards the future, and what sort of midwife you would like to be. To support you with this, the module will provide you with learning opportunities to explore the wide range of midwifery practice - locally, nationally and internationally. Your study will encompass leadership, and risk and quality, including patient safety concerns. You will consider change management via group work, and individually will reflect critically on your journey to this point, as well as your future vision for your practice as a midwife.

You will have a unique opportunity to provide, in small groups, continuity of carer for a small group of women under appropriate supervision. The focus will be on providing safe, effective and compassionate care. You'll work in teams of around 3 or 4 students, providing care to 6 to 8 women during the antenatal, intrapartum and postnatal period. You'll explore the theoretical basis both for continuity of carer models of care, and effective teamwork, and reflect critically on these. You'll create a portfolio of your experiences for submission, including peer, Practice Supervisor and service user feedback, carefully considering the NMC Code of Conduct and how to anonymise the care you provided within this appropriately.

Half of your learning on this module will take place in placement working with your Practice Supervisors to provide care to women and their families. During your final year, you may begin to work under indirect supervision as is appropriate for your stage of learning.

In this final practice module, you will consolidate all of your learning on the course thus far, and prepare for life as a newly qualified midwife. You’ll consider the skills of accountability and autonomy, preparing you to be the lead professional caring for women and newborn infants throughout the whole continuum of care. You’ll be encouraged to increasingly work under indirect supervision, identifying your learning needs towards the achievement of your goals.

By the end of this module, you will have completed all of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) requirements for entry onto the NMC register. Alongside this, you’ll also have met other core requirements such as completion of theoretical and practical based learning of Newborn and Infant Physical Examination (NIPE), and evidence of UNICEF Baby Friendly Initiative infant feeding support.

You will also complete all practice requirements across the national practice assessment document (MORA) and the Brookes Practice Portfolio.

This module provides you with a unique opportunity to select a topic, theme or issue of personal interest that is relevant to midwifery practice and critically investigate this in depth. Via 1 of 3 overarching approaches (literature review, research proposal or analytical essay), you will explore your topic by implementing a suitable methodology and method. You will explore your findings in the wider context of maternity care, including considering future practice and research recommendations. You will demonstrate your ability to consolidate and progress a systematic and coherent body of knowledge within your project write-up.

We currently work with 3 placement providers: Oxfordshire University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (OUH), Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (GH) and Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust (RBH).

You will experience high quality, safe, effective and compassionate care across the range of care settings. Each year you will have core placements in community, on the antenatal and/or postnatal wards and in an intrapartum placement. You may also experience placements in triage units, high dependency, newborn intensive care, infant feeding clinics and working alongside senior leaders such as consultant midwives and managers. You’ll have the opportunity to work in a range of intrapartum care settings which may include obstetric units, alongside and freestanding midwifery units, and home birth.

In all placement areas, and across all partners, you will be allocated a Practice Supervisor/s and a Practice Assessor - as is required by the Nursing and Midwifery Council.