Your Career
Midwives often describe their job as 'privileged'. The role they have in preparing women for the delivery of new life makes them a vital presence during all stages of pregnancy, labour and the early postnatal period.
Midwifery
The role Midwives have in preparing women for the delivery of new life makes them a vital presence during all stages of pregnancy, labour and the early postnatal period.
As well as the satisfaction it brings, the role is demanding and carries a high level of responsibility. Midwives work in all healthcare settings in a variety of ways, providing women and their families with choices and continuity of care.
You’ll mainly deal with pregnant women requiring professional support and advice. You are likely to be the lead health professional and contact for a woman, providing evidence-based information and helping her make informed choices about the options and services available throughout her pregnancy.
You’ll be the expert on childbirth and your responsibilities are likely to be diverse. You’ll provide:
- provide full antenatal care, including parenting classes, clinical examinations and screening
- identify high-risk pregnancies
- monitor women and support them during labour and the birthing process
- teach new and expectant mothers how to feed, care for and bathe their babies
You could be working with women from a variety of backgrounds and you will need to be confident enough to communicate with different people. Some women and their families might be homeless, socially excluded, have disabilities or be very young. Other clients may be from certain cultural or religious backgrounds.
All women will need you to understand the emotional, physical and psychological processes of pregnancy and birth. Sometimes pregnancies do not go to plan and you will need to offer support and advice on stillbirth, miscarriage, termination, neonatal death and neonatal abnormalities.
If you are working as a community midwife, you are likely to develop good professional relationships with your families, which can make counselling easier at difficult times.
You’ll often work on a rota and be on-call to provide 24-hour care at the woman’s home as well as in hospital.
Working autonomously and as part of a team
As a midwife, you’ll mainly deal with women who are healthy but require professional support and advice to help them throughout pregnancy, labour and the postnatal period.
If there are no complications, you will be the lead health professional and contact for a woman, providing evidence-based information and helping her make informed choices about the options and services available throughout her pregnancy and labour.
A midwife’s client base often includes women from a variety of backgrounds and you will need to be confident enough to communicate with different people. Some women and their families will have challenging circumstances – they may be homeless, socially excluded, have disabilities or be very young, in which case you may need to liaise with social services.
Other clients may be from certain cultural or religious backgrounds, where high levels of empathy and intuition are important.
Frequently asked questions
What opportunities are available?
Exciting opportunities exist for midwives working in the Royal Victoria Infirmary’s maternity services. The unit was rated outstanding in the most recent CQC inspection. There are around 6500 births per year of which 1400 births are in the co-located midwifery-led Newcastle Birthing Centre. We provide a comprehensive range of services from low risk to highly complex care for women and babies which are inclusive of four community midwifery teams. This provides midwives working in the Trust diverse professional experiences and makes clinical practice both exciting and challenging.
All newly registered and new to post midwives receive a comprehensive preceptorship programme on appointment and a designated Band 7 Team Lead. This helps with orientation into all clinical areas, develop the required knowledge, clinical skills and competencies. This is supported and facilitated by our team of Practice Support Midwives.
We have teams of Research and Specialist Midwives who are an educational resource and provide clinical support for midwives. We also have a large team of support staff including theatre nurses, nursery nurses, midwifery support workers and health care assistants.
How do we recruit?
All midwifery vacancies are advertised here. Interview dates are included on the adverts. It is unlikely interviews can be provided on alternative dates.
Band 5 and Band 6 posts are usually advertised together. The posts, unless stated, would be for rotational posts providing antenatal, intrapartum and postnatal hospital and community care.
Band 7 posts would be for a specific clinical area. Part of the recruitment process would include Strength Based Recruitment.
Each vacancy will have a named contact should applicants have any specific queries.
Can I visit the unit?
If you have not worked in the Trust before we would encourage you to come and look around the unit in advance of your interview. To do this, please contact the named contact on the job advert and we will be happy to arrange this for you.
Return to practise midwives?
We can accommodate midwives on the return to practice programme. For further information please contact the University of Northumbria.
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