Your student news: Winter 2018
on 23 November 2018 Midwives Magazine Student midwives
What’s new in the student world? Your chance to tell us where you’ve been and what you’ve been up to...
RCM membership benefits
Welcome student midwives
To all the new and existing student midwives who have recently joined us,
if you missed our visit to your university during freshers’ season, we’d like
to remind you of all the wonderful benefits the RCM can offer. Your membership includes:
- Subscription to Midwives magazine
- Online subscription to Evidence based midwifery
- Medical malpractice insurance
- Access to our unique library collection and enquiry service, including archives and bibliographic databases to support your coursework
- i-learn – the RCM’s online learning platform containing clinical and theoretical modules to supplement your studies
- i-folio – an online portal resource to build your CV.
As well as all of this, you should have received a welcome pack full of lots of useful goodies to help get you started with your studies and future career.
Apprenticeships
Update
The Midwifery Apprenticeship Trailblazer is full steam ahead; with the draft Apprenticeship standard submitted and work continuing on the assessment framework.
At the time of writing, the decision from the Institute of Apprenticeships to approve the apprenticeship is still pending, but is expected this autumn. The RCM will keep you informed.
Swansea supports breastfeeding
Students launch campaign
First-year student midwives at Swansea University launched a breastfeeding support campaign to help empower women in the local area to breastfeed.
The campaign ran in conjunction with World Breastfeeding Week and the cohort designed a poster and the hashtag #SwanseaSupportsBreastfeeding.
They also encouraged local businesses and outlets to display the posters to help show their support for women to breastfeed anywhere in Swansea.
The launch was organised at the university with students, staff, mums, babies and an RCM representative in attendance.
Increase in students
Numbers up in Northern Ireland
There has been an increase in both the numbers of direct-entry midwifery students and the 21-month post-reg course entrants who began their training in Northern Ireland (NI) in November. RCM national officer for NI Mary Caddell said that while the increase might bring some challenges initially, as there will be more students on placement, which will require more mentors, the service is up for it, as they need to train the next generation of midwives.
The increase is in response to lobbying the Department of Health about staffing issues and the demographics of the midwifery workforce in NI.
‘We are delighted we have been heard and look forward to seeing the new midwives in service in 2020-21,’ Mary added.
All Ireland conference
Book your place
The second All Ireland Student Midwives Conference will be taking place on 8 December at Queen’s University Belfast.
It will also form part of the centenary celebrations of The Midwives (Ireland) Act 1918.
Speakers include Sheena Byrom, Deidre Munro, Jeannine Breathnach, Shona Hamilton, Cecily Begley and Patricia Gillen.
For more information and to book tickets, go to here.
Purple watch initiative
NQM support
An intitiative has been set up to support 32 third-year student midwives in their new roles at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (GGC).
The NQMs from the University of the West of Scotland were hired this year and took part in a two-week induction where they received a warm welcome from the NHS GGC team, who created the ‘purple watch’ initiative to support them.
It is hoped that the initiative could spread to all boards across the UK.
A special thank you goes to practice development midwife Joanna Greenock (front row, centre) for all her hard work over the two-week induction period.