If someone asked you what the new NMC education standards mean for midwives training in 2019 and beyond, would you know how to answer?
Or would you think ‘I should know this, I care!’
Maybe you’ve had a look at the new Nursing and Midwifery Council guidelines on education and gone ‘ack, complicated, what?’
When you see 19 separate guidelines on practice supervision in corporate speak on the NMC website, it’s easy to get demoralised.
But it’s actually pretty straightforward.
In this post I’ll set out what you need to know in easy terms and with some of my informed opinions sprinkled in, ‘cos it’s my blog : )
You can also watch the video if that's easier.
In 2017, the NMC ran a consultation on education standards that midwives could add their opinions to. There have been panels and independent evaluation groups at the NMC looking at changing and improving education for midwifery since then.
The NMC have said several times that new education standards for midwives are needed because the world is changing, women’s lives are different and midwives have a more demanding role and skill set than ever before. Events like those at Morecambe Bay will likely have been a reason for the new standards too.
These standards will be rolled out from winter 2019.
The changes that stood out to me are as follows:
Care simulation hours will no longer be capped. Unis will be able to have their students spend more time in skills labs if this is what they feel is best. Students tend to value these sessions, so as long as simulated practice doesn’t outweigh real practice, this sounds like a good thing to me.
The NMC will also be adopting prescribing guidelines from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, which sounds fine. Midwives have stringent rules around prescribing anyway since unlike nurses, they can prescribe pretty much from qualification, so I can’t imagine this will be too different. Interestingly nurses will also be able to prescribe as soon as they’re qualified too when previously they had to wait three years to apply.
But the most important change for me is that clinical mentors will no longer be a thing.
In the past, student midwives has ‘personal tutors’ doing the academic side of things and ‘sign off mentors’ who they had to work with 40% of the time in clinical practice.
Under the new standards instead of these there will now be:
Academic Assessors
and
Practice Assessors
These two staff members will collaborate on how students are doing and together recommend that students should progress to the next stage of the course (or not) .
This is an interesting change because students don’t have to work with one key mentor as much.
Instead they can work with ‘Practice Supervisors’ who can be any staff member regulated by the NMC. ‘Practice Supervisors’ might be newly qualified midwives, paediatric nurses, basically anyone with good skills to teach students. The new standards mean anyone regulated can muck in with teaching.
Practice Assessors will collate feedback from Practice Supervisors.
It’s my conjecture that students will get to work with more people and there will be more flexibility about teaching in placements. The same standards or higher will apply and unis and placements will be able to organise themselves as they see fit.
This might mean more student midwives can be trained, which is what the government wants and the country needs.
It also might mean nothing changes in some places. Students will continue to primarily work with sign off mentors just under the new name of ‘practice assessors’.
I’m very capable of criticising the NMC when necessary (see my series of posts from when Independent Midwives weren’t allowed to practice), but for me, in terms of the new education standards, it looks like there’s potential for students to get an amazing level of education.
Of course, this is all up to universities and trusts.
It also means as a newly qualified midwife you may end up having a student with you much sooner.
This could be a problem, we don’t want the blind leading the blind. But the newly qualified midwives I’ve met are up to date with the research and have a ‘third eye’ of hyper vigilance in terms of accountability and asking for help. They may also get how to teach students midwifery skills since they’ve had recent experience of being students themselves.
The only issue is continuity. With ‘Better Births’ being implemented around the country to achieve continuity for women, with all the benefits and satisfaction that seeing one midwife provides, I can understand why many are wary of taking continuity of mentorship away from students.
But I think there’s always been a need for students to find their own mentors to help nurture them through their career.
The midwives who formed me most didn’t necessarily mentor me, I was won over watching their practice or reading their books or online comments. I made contact at conferences or found out about their work through groups like the Association of Radical Midwives.
Often it was all to do with the emotional wellbeing of women and how they made them feel, though of course epic clinical skills are vital to underpin this.
It’s also this group of informal mentors that I learnt midwifery intuition from : )
Under the new NMC education guidelines, it might be even more important to seek this kind of mentorship out for yourself.
Once you’ve read this through, I’d love to hear from you. Leave me a comment letting me know:
1. How do you think the new NMC education standards will impact you?
2. Do you have a midwifery role model? How did you meet them or learn from them – how would you suggest a student or newly qualified midwife find such a person?
Hi I’m 12 and hope to become a midwife when I am older do you have any tips or know anything I could work on now towards it??
Hi Katie, thanks for you comment, wow you’re very focused at such a young age! I would come and subscribe to midwifediaries.com for free blog posts on midwifery which are up to date, I have fun with them too so they’re good to read! Volunteering with people is always a good thing to do to develop your transferrable skills, could you get involved via your school with any caring volunteer positions? I’d also start to read everything you can get your hands on midwifery wise, and perhaps come over to the Secret Community for Midwives in the Making on Facebook for an idea of what midwives talk about x
I love your blog and am currently reading your book. Unfortunately, I am from the US so the educational path and such is much different than what you describe in the UK. Do you know of any American midwife blogs? I’ve tried searching online but most are very, very established in their careers and the things they write about are so far off from where I am in my journey to be a midwife.
Hi Alicia,
Great question! I don’t know many American midwife blogs sadly, though MidwifeThinking is a great Australian one, and SaraWickham.com is one of my favourite UK ones. Please do let me know if you find any good American midwife blogs, I’m always on the lookout! x
Hi Ellie,
I just wanted to share a bit of the furore that is occurring in the Queensland state of Australia. Obstetricians are moaning about the poor outcomes etc etc of midwifery led care. http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/ama-queensland-seeks-urgent-change-to-way-maternal-services-delivered-in-queensland/news-story/5fa372d6478e4cdbba9de7977df224e1
I thought we were passed all this but apparently not.
Hi Ellie,
I’m a first year student midwife, and would eventually like to work as a midwife on First Nations reserves in Canada. Do you have any contacts who have trained as a midwife in the uk and moved over to Canada? Or do you yourself have any idea how the transfer would work?
Hi Ellie – if you particularly want to work for First Nations’ families I would first contact some of the Aboriginal health organisations or governance bodies to scope out how they would see a midwife from the UK working out. Perhaps you have First Nations/ Aboriginal heritage yourself, but if not you’d need to consider the implications of working as a outsider in communities that have a history of colonialism harming their existing birth cultures. e.g. http://www.naho.ca/midwifery/ also your immigration and work visa would be through the Canadian government but perhaps you could also ask permission of First Nation government for the area you’d like to practice in?
Hi Ellie, i am a second year student of midwifery in Slovakia.
I would like to ask you, what’s your posture for needs of women who are in puerperium ? What is your opinion for lactation and sports activities in postpartal period?
Thanks, for answer 🙂
Hello, I have always been interested in midwifery at young age. At the moment, I am a Senior in high school and I am writing a paper on a career that I am interested in. I am required to have an interview with a midwife for research for my pages.Would you mind if I interviewed you for the role?
Hi Alysia, please email team@midwifediaries.com and we can sort something 🙂
I’d LOVE LOVE LOVE to win a free month of your personal statement school! I’m a 33(nearly!) year young working Mum of 2, retaking 2 of my GCSE’s, training to become a breastfeeding peer supporter, and trying to save as much as I can for 3 years without a wage and shed loads of student debt, with a mortgage! I’ve got your book which I LOVE! But I am still struggling on how to even get started!!! And what experience I have that’s relevant enough to be worthy of going on my statement to stand out! I’ll be applying in Sept 19, to hopefully get a place in Sept 2020, so this would be amazing!!! Pretty pretty pretty please!!!! ??????