welcome
Student conference 2026
The Student Midwife Journey
Join us to connect with student midwives from across the UK, meet the RCM team, and expand your professional network.
The student midwife journey is a powerful celebration of growth, resilience, and purpose. It marks a transformative path from the foundations of classroom learning to the realities of hands-on clinical practice where knowledge is enriched by compassion and care.
This conference brings that journey to life, creating a space where experiences are shared, stories inspire, and expert voices guide the way forward. Together, we explore the challenges, triumphs, and defining moments that shape future midwives.
Join us as we empower the next generation to step confidently into their roles—grounded in skill, driven by empathy, and committed to making a meaningful difference in the lives of women and families.
Dragon’s Den style session
This year’s student conference includes an exciting Dragon’s Den style session, giving student midwives the chance to present their ideas, research, or quality improvement projects to a panel of expert judges.
Taking place on both conference days, each session will feature four presentation slots. Each presenter or small group will have five minutes to pitch their proposal, followed by five minutes of constructive feedback from the Dragons panel. Topics can cover any area of research, quality improvement, or practice innovation.
Submissions should address three questions:
- What your proposal is,
- Why it is needed,
- What impact it could have on women, birthing people, midwives, or students.
Key information for students:
- For structure, we recommend abstracts follow the structure of title, background, aim, methods, proposal, and relevance, but it is not mandatory.
- Group entries are allowed, but with no more than three students at a time.
- At least one student per entry must be an RCM member.
Abstract submissions are now open to student midwives in all year groups. Student should submit their abstracts by using this link: Student conference : Dragon’s Den style session abstracts – Fill in form
Closing date Midnight Sunday 20 September 2026
Registration, marketplace, refreshments and networking
Celebrating the first year of the RCM new strategy ‘Improve, Amplify, Build’
Resources
Break and exhibition
Workshops
Pick one of these workshops
Workshop 1: Raising your voices: Activism and the RCM
Join RCM Organisers to discover the role of activists in your local branch and how you can get involved. Key points that will be highlighted
- Working with Union Learning Representatives (ULRs) to identify learning needs, ideas, and requests
- Promoting learning opportunities within the branch
- Promote and raise awareness of branch funds available to students
- Support and participate in Student Celebration Day
- Promote Midsocs funding and grants
Workshop 2: Supporting families through memory-making
This session explores compassionate ways to support bereaved families through the creation of memory boxes for babies. It will highlight the different boxes available depending on their religious/cultural beliefs. Attendees will gain practical insights into sensitive communication, inclusive practices, and the emotional significance of memory-making, helping professionals offer meaningful support during an incredibly difficult time.
Workshop 3:
Starting strong: building research skills in midwifery
This session focuses on building strong foundations in research skills exploring practical approaches to developing confidence in finding, appraising, and applying evidence to support high-quality, woman-centred care.
Resources
Workshops
Pick one of these workshops
Workshop 4: Student midwives as future leaders
This session explores the vital role of student midwives as emerging leaders within maternity services. It will highlight how effective communication, advocacy, critical thinking, and teamwork can empower students to influence positive change in practice. Attendees will gain insight into nurturing confidence, embracing innovation, and supporting a culture of leadership from the outset of training, helping to shape a resilient and forward-thinking midwifery workforce
Workshop 5: Nurturing confidence in breastfeeding support
Explore practical techniques to enhance knowledge, communication skills, and compassionate care, enabling midwives to empower families in their feeding choices. Attendees will gain insight into building trust, addressing common challenges, and delivering consistent, evidence-informed support, ultimately promoting positive breastfeeding experiences and improved outcomes for mothers and babies.
Workshop 6: Difficult conversations: Educate not Mutilate
This FGM workshop is survivor‑led and delivered through Educate Not Mutilate CIO. It is guided by Hibo Wardere, our Educational Lead and one of ENM’s founders. Hibo brings her lived experience and decades of advocacy to the session, offering powerful insight that makes the workshop both deeply personal and highly practical.
She explains what FGM is, why it happens, and the lasting impact it has on survivors, families, and communities. Alongside the cultural and social pressures that sustain the practice, Hibo explores the serious physical consequences from chronic pain and complications in childbirth to long‑term health risks. She also highlights the mental and emotional toll, including trauma, anxiety, and the challenges survivors face on their healing journey.
The workshop also covers the UK’s legal framework, the safeguarding responsibilities of schools and professionals, and clear, actionable steps for prevention, early identification, and survivor‑centred support. By the end of the session, participants leave with a grounded understanding of FGM, its physical and psychological impacts, and the crucial role each of us can play in ending it through education, advocacy, and survivor‑led change.
Resources
Lunch and exhibition
Lunch and exhibition
Workshops
Please pick one workshop to attend
Workshop 7: Caring for yourself while caring for others
Workshop 8: Supporting birth at home with confidence
This session explores how to support safe, personalised, and confident care for families choosing to give birth at home. It will focus on building midwives’ confidence in clinical decision-making, risk assessment, and emergency preparedness, alongside fostering trusting relationships with families. Attendees will gain practical insights into promoting physiological birth, working collaboratively across services, and delivering respectful, woman-centred care in the home setting.
Workshop 9: Dragon Den style pitches
A fast-paced, interactive ‘Dragon’s Den’ style session where student midwives present ideas, research, or quality improvement (QI) projects to a panel of expert ‘Dragons’. Presenters receive constructive feedback in a fun, but supportive environment
Break and exhibition
TBC
Finding your feet: Reflections first 3 months after qualifying
Registration, marketplace, refreshments and networking
Workshops
Please pick one workshop to attend
Workshop 1: Raising your voices: Activism and the RCM
Join RCM Organisers to discover the role of activists in your local branch and how you can get involved. Key points that will be highlighted
- Working with Union Learning Representatives (ULRs) to identify learning needs, ideas, and requests
- Promoting learning opportunities within the branch
- Promote and raise awareness of branch funds available to students
- Support and participate in Student Celebration Day
- Promote Midsocs funding and grants
Workshop 2: Supporting families through memory-making
This session explores compassionate ways to support bereaved families through the creation of memory boxes for babies. It will highlight the different boxes available depending on their religious/cultural beliefs. Attendees will gain practical insights into sensitive communication, inclusive practices, and the emotional significance of memory-making, helping professionals offer meaningful support during an incredibly difficult time.
Workshop 3:
Starting strong: building research skills in midwifery
This session focuses on building strong foundations in research skills exploring practical approaches to developing confidence in finding, appraising, and applying evidence to support high-quality, woman-centred care.
Resources
Workshops
Please pick one workshop to attend
Workshop 4: Student midwives as future leaders
This session explores the vital role of student midwives as emerging leaders within maternity services. It will highlight how effective communication, advocacy, critical thinking, and teamwork can empower students to influence positive change in practice. Attendees will gain insight into nurturing confidence, embracing innovation, and supporting a culture of leadership from the outset of training, helping to shape a resilient and forward-thinking midwifery workforce
Workshop 5: Nurturing confidence in breastfeeding support
Explore practical techniques to enhance knowledge, communication skills, and compassionate care, enabling midwives to empower families in their feeding choices. Attendees will gain insight into building trust, addressing common challenges, and delivering consistent, evidence-informed support, ultimately promoting positive breastfeeding experiences and improved outcomes for mothers and babies.
Workshop 6: Difficult conversations: Educate not Mutilate
This FGM workshop is survivor‑led and delivered through Educate Not Mutilate CIO. It is guided by Hibo Wardere, our Educational Lead and one of ENM’s founders. Hibo brings her lived experience and decades of advocacy to the session, offering powerful insight that makes the workshop both deeply personal and highly practical.
She explains what FGM is, why it happens, and the lasting impact it has on survivors, families, and communities. Alongside the cultural and social pressures that sustain the practice, Hibo explores the serious physical consequences from chronic pain and complications in childbirth to long‑term health risks. She also highlights the mental and emotional toll, including trauma, anxiety, and the challenges survivors face on their healing journey.
The workshop also covers the UK’s legal framework, the safeguarding responsibilities of schools and professionals, and clear, actionable steps for prevention, early identification, and survivor‑centred support. By the end of the session, participants leave with a grounded understanding of FGM, its physical and psychological impacts, and the crucial role each of us can play in ending it through education, advocacy, and survivor‑led change.
Resources
Workshops
Please pick one workshop to attend
Workshop 4: Student midwives as future leaders
This session explores the vital role of student midwives as emerging leaders within maternity services. It will highlight how effective communication, advocacy, critical thinking, and teamwork can empower students to influence positive change in practice. Attendees will gain insight into nurturing confidence, embracing innovation, and supporting a culture of leadership from the outset of training, helping to shape a resilient and forward-thinking midwifery workforce
Workshop 5: Nurturing confidence in breastfeeding support
Explore practical techniques to enhance knowledge, communication skills, and compassionate care, enabling midwives to empower families in their feeding choices. Attendees will gain insight into building trust, addressing common challenges, and delivering consistent, evidence-informed support, ultimately promoting positive breastfeeding experiences and improved outcomes for mothers and babies.
Workshop 6: Difficult conversations: Educate not Mutilate
This FGM workshop is survivor‑led and delivered through Educate Not Mutilate CIO. It is guided by Hibo Wardere, our Educational Lead and one of ENM’s founders. Hibo brings her lived experience and decades of advocacy to the session, offering powerful insight that makes the workshop both deeply personal and highly practical.
She explains what FGM is, why it happens, and the lasting impact it has on survivors, families, and communities. Alongside the cultural and social pressures that sustain the practice, Hibo explores the serious physical consequences from chronic pain and complications in childbirth to long‑term health risks. She also highlights the mental and emotional toll, including trauma, anxiety, and the challenges survivors face on their healing journey.
The workshop also covers the UK’s legal framework, the safeguarding responsibilities of schools and professionals, and clear, actionable steps for prevention, early identification, and survivor‑centred support. By the end of the session, participants leave with a grounded understanding of FGM, its physical and psychological impacts, and the crucial role each of us can play in ending it through education, advocacy, and survivor‑led change.
Resources
Lunch, exhibition and posters
Workshops
Please pick one workshop to attend
Workshop 7: Caring for yourself while caring for others
Workshop 8: Supporting birth at home with confidence
This session explores how to support safe, personalised, and confident care for families choosing to give birth at home. It will focus on building midwives’ confidence in clinical decision-making, risk assessment, and emergency preparedness, alongside fostering trusting relationships with families. Attendees will gain practical insights into promoting physiological birth, working collaboratively across services, and delivering respectful, woman-centred care in the home setting.
Workshop 9: Dragon Den style pitches
A fast-paced, interactive ‘Dragon’s Den’ style session where student midwives present ideas, research, or quality improvement (QI) projects to a panel of expert ‘Dragons’. Presenters receive constructive feedback in a fun, but supportive environment
Resources
Break and exhibition
Cancer support in pregnancy and beyond
Beyond the NHS: Global midwifery and women’s health
4Louis is a UK charity that works across the country to support anyone affected by miscarriage, stillbirth and the death of a baby or child. We work to improve care bereaved families receive from healthcare and other professionals. We provide memory boxes and mementos to help families create lasting memories of their loved one. We provide useful tools, equipment, and training free of charge to hospital units and other professionals who work with grieving families. We understand that every family’s journey is unique, and we strive to improve the services given to families who have lost a baby or child.
The NIHR fund, enable and deliver world-leading health and social care research that improves people’s health and wellbeing, and promotes economic growth.
The NIHR Nursing and Midwifery vision is to inspire midwives and nurses to improve health outcomes through research. Their aim is to enable midwives and nurses who support, deliver or lead research to develop and work to their potential, and to develop a pipeline of skilled research midwives and nurses at all stages in their career.
Difficult conversations: educate not mutilate workshop
Hibo Wardere
Educational Lead,
Educate Not Mutilate
Hibo Wardere is a Somali‑born British author, educator, and internationally recognised specialist in Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). A survivor of type 3 FGM, she has transformed her lived experience into a powerful force for education, safeguarding, and social change.
After arriving in the UK as a refugee from the Somali Civil War, Hibo began her career in education, where sharing her personal story during a training assignment led to her first invitation to speak publicly about FGM. Since then, she has become one of the UK’s leading voices on the subject, delivering training to schools, universities, NHS teams, police forces, and community organisations across the country.
Her book Cut: One Woman’s Fight Against FGM in Britain Today, brought national attention to her work and has been widely praised for its honesty, courage, and clarity. Hibo’s survivor‑led approach has reshaped how professionals understand FGM, placing empathy, cultural insight, and practical safeguarding at the centre of prevention.
Hibo continues to work nationally and internationally as an educator, advisor, and advocate, including through her role with Educate Not Mutilate, where she leads programmes focused on awareness, protection, and community empowerment. Her voice remains instrumental in the global movement to end FGM within this generation.
