Midwifery In Australia Essay

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Graduate midwives are the future of midwifery. It is in the workforce’s best interest to encourage and support these new midwives to be confident in their role and to help them continue their passion for the field of midwifery in hope that they will remain in the profession long-term. This is to ensure not only adequate staffing to care for women throughout the perinatal and postnatal periods but also so that they can influence and help improve midwifery in Australia. New midwives have traditionally found difficulty in transitioning from student life in clinical placement to practising as a registered midwife, with a substantial increase in responsibility and accountability (Barry, Hauck, O’Donoghue & Clarke, 2014; Davis, Foureur, Clements, …show more content…

This can mean new graduates are unable to provide information or perform some responsibilities independently. Some of these tasks may be cannulation or prescribing medications using a midwife-initiated standing order. Midwives who have just graduated may also find other skills may not be as fully developed as they would like, such as CTG interpretation or performing vaginal examinations. As a midwifery student, these challenges will be some that I face in the years to come as I begin my practice as a registered midwife. On clinical placements, I have seen instances where midwives have required assistance to perform tasks such as cannulating a woman, where they have asked another midwife or doctor to do this for them. This can be tough sometimes as there is not always someone available to perform this task which can be sometimes necessary to be performed urgently, thus losing time. As cannulation is not a skill included in the Bachelor of Midwifery, this is a skill that a graduate will have to work towards once already practicing. For other tasks such as the ability to prescribe standing orders, the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia [NMBA] (2017) states that a midwife requires current registration without any conditions, to have had 3 years full time clinical practice and to complete an