Midwifery

Midwives are the lead healthcare professional and highly skilled, knowledgeable advocates overseeing continuity and coordination of high quality physical, psychological, social, cultural and spiritual care for women and newborns, their partners and families.

This ever-evolving profession is honoured to safeguard care for mothers and babies which is competent, safe and responsive to the best available and emerging evidence-based practice.

To enable this, midwives need to keep up to date with the very latest developments by constantly advancing their knowledge and skillset as they strive to provide the best possible care and health outcomes for their patients whilst anticipating and preventing complications.

Here at the Newcastle Hospitals, we believe embedding continuing professional development (CPD) in daily working life is integral to ensuring midwives can remain at the forefront of evidence based practice whilst empowering them to recognise the potential for, and instigate service improvements and enhanced patient experience.

CPD support at Newcastle Hospitals

Development opportunities and career aspirations can be discussed in close liaison with the Practice Development Midwife or line manager at annual appraisals or any other time of the year. These discussions help us to understand how we can help you to take steps forward to achieve your goals.

For example, you may wish to specialise in a particular area of practice or explore teaching or research. Further training can support you to prepare for a future role – you may wish to become an advanced clinical practitioner or progress into management.

Annual appraisals help to shape personal development plans to set out learning opportunities which can be provided either in-house or externally.

Choosing the right CPD for you

There is a huge and diverse range of learning and development opportunities for our maternity colleagues to choose from.

We offer a wide variety of courses which are run in-house by our Education Workforce Development team and you can seek advice from our team here at the Newcastle Clinical Skills Academy about what might work for you.

If it’s something relating to leadership that you’re looking for then head to the Leadership section of our website to find out more.

If you have a particular interest in research then our section on how to #MakeSpace4Research will tell you everything you need to know.

Here are just some examples of the types of learning opportunities you could explore:

• Bereavement care
• Birth reflections
• Black women in leadership
• Counselling
• Coaching and mentoring
• Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Programme
• Human factors
• Infancy and sleep
• LEO programme
• Masterclasses
• Masters programmes and top up degrees
• Mindfulness
• Patient safety
• Perineal repair updates
• Perinatal mental health
• Physical assessment and care of newborn
• Prevention of pre-term
• Profession Midwifery Advocate (PMA) training
• Newborn life support provider course
• Sensory beginnings
• Ultrasound scanning

Nursing & Midwifery Council (NMC) support

All nurses and midwives must demonstrate that they have undertaken 35 hours of CPD relevant to their scope of practice in the three year period since their registration was last renewed, or since joining the register.

Of those 35 hours of CPD, at least 20 must have included participatory (face to face) learning.

The NMC website provides lot of guidance and examples of how you can meet the requirements and how to maintain accurate records of CPD you have undertaken.

Royal College of Midwives (RCM) support

The Royal College of Midwives website offers i-learn which provides a wide range of over 150 online learning modules featuring interactive activities, animation, video, audio and quizzes all designed to support RCM members’ CPD.

Case studies and reflective activities are also included and there is also an online journal to keep a record of reflective practice as well as storing documentation and certificates from completed learning modules, conferences and workshops called i-folio.

Whilst a private space, you can share some parts of your portfolio to selected people, ideal for students or revalidation.

Higher Education Providers

We work closely with our local higher education providers some of which are listed below:

Northumbria University

Northumbria University offers a wide range of healthcare related courses.

Sunderland University

Sunderland University offers a range of part and full time courses to suit all levels.

Teesside University

Teesside University offers a range of courses related to nursing and health.