Early Career Midwives
From the moment you graduate, the RCM is here to support you throughout your midwifery career with learning and development opportunities, networking, financial and wellbeing support and much more.
Learning and development
We have lots of resources available to support your continuous learning and development as a midwife in your early career.
Our newly developed Preceptorship Guide will help you navigate and get the most out of your midwifery preceptorship.
Make sure you visit i-learn for our easily accessible online learning modules. There are over 150 RCM i-learn modules with more being developed all the time: from 10-minute tasters that can be taken in your coffee break to packages of courses, such as Examination of the Newborn.
You can access more information about the RCM library here and be sure to check out MIDIRS too.
The RCM also offers a range of events, both face to face and virtual, to support you throughout your career and there are recordings of ECM specific webinars here.
Explore more of our resources, standards and guidance on our Professional Practice page and read more about professional and personal leadership development here. You are responsible for your revalidation with the NMC every three years. For more information on your responsibilities visit the NMC website here.
Getting involved
There are lots of opportunities for you to get involved with the RCM – from local to national level. Your voice as a midwife in your early career is incredibly valuable, so get involved:
Within your RCM branch – Join fellow newly qualified midwives and your other RCM colleagues by getting involved in your local RCM branch. Each workplace has its own RCM branch, which will be holding regular meetings, events and activities for you to be a part of – your local RCM activists will be waiting to hear from you in order to shape what the branch does over a given year. Lots of branches have been involved with supporting health and wellbeing in the workplace through the Caring for You campaign, take a look at the resources available here. Find out the contact details for activists in your local branch by logging into your membership portal.
As an RCM activist: We are always looking to recruit more activists in the workplace and as a midwife early into their career, your fresh perspective could make the difference to the workplace environment. Take a look at some of the options for getting active in your workplace and the different roles available. RCM activists cover a number of important roles in the workplace and each role plays a significant part in creating an environment that is vibrant, growing and always improving the workplace, the culture and the future prospects and experience of RCM members. Representing and supporting members is a demanding role, but it is very satisfying, especially when you are able to win a fair deal for our members. The skills that you gain as an activist will assist you in your career and will also aid your personal and professional development. The RCM provides full training and support for activists to take on their role.
With the TUC Young Workers Forum: The Trades Union Congress has a Young Workers’ Forum that brings together representatives of young members from each affiliate union to co-ordinate relevant work and activity. Young workers are more likely to be in insecure work, low paid jobs and lacking progression opportunities – unions can help with all of this, but this means recruiting more young workers into their unions. You can find information and tools specific to young workers here.
Preceptorship Guide
Our newly developed Preceptorship Guide will help you navigate and get the most out of your midwifery preceptorship.
Revalidation i-learn module
This easy to navigate i-learn module uses animation, short video clips and interactive activities to explore revalidation, what midwives need to do to maintain their effective registration and how the RCM and our resources can help you with this process.
