Writing Your Personal Statement in 2023
Writing your personal statement is often an effort, that’s normal as you care so much! But getting to know a few key midwifery reports will give you a good grounding in what’s going on and give you something reliable and impressive to reference.
Remember, even academics rarely read things cover to cover! Think, what’s the top 20% of this which will be helpful? (Unless you’re really enjoying reading something wholesale that is, if so, have at it!)
NICE Antenatal Guidelines
MBRRACE - this is the big report on maternal mortality in the UK - you can see what MBRRACE is here
Sarawickham.com (wonderful research write ups)
The NMC Code
On failures in care (so hard…think about how you would like your family members to be treated and try to learn from them that way)
The Kirkup Report (the most recent one, there was another in 2015 that took place in Morecambe Bay)
Midwifery is vast, and you won’t be expected to know everything, but perhaps think about enjoying and getting to know one particular topic. It’s kind of like doing an archaeological dig - you don’t have the capacity to look at every square cm in detail, but perhaps concentrating one artefact can tell you an awful lot about midwifery philosophy.
People have concentrated on:
Bereavement (see Beyond Bea, 4Louis, SANDS)
Teenage pregnancy (rates have reduced in recent years)
Complex care, things like diabetes or pre-eclampsia
Birth trauma
Informed choice and consent
Physiological birth
Mental Illness
Racism and different outcomes for Black or brown skinned clients
LGBTQIA+
The best way to talk about an area of interest is to focus on it for a few sentences towards the end of your statement in a ‘midwifery reading and learning’ section. Try and apply what you learnt about this one area to all clients - so getting it right for those who have complex care means you are learning so much about listening and communication which can be useful for every client.
Want further support? Check out Personal Statement School, my highly reviewed video course to take you through writing competitively.
Or book a one-to-one with me and we can figure out how to get all of your skills and qualities into one amazing statement.