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Summary:
Applying through UCAS? Apply here (B711)
Course Code: B711
Applying through UCAS? Apply here (B711)
Course Code: B711
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Why choose the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health Education
Our Midwifery and Nursing courses rank 1st in their subject table for graduate prospects – outcomes (Complete University Guide, 2024).
Our Midwifery courses rank 3rd in their subject area for ‘value added’ progression - how students’ entry qualifications compare with their degree results (Guardian, 2024).
This course is 50% practice-based so you spend half your time on placement, supported by a registered midwife.
About the course
On this practice-based course, you learn to care for women/birthing people through pregnancy, labour and the postnatal period, conducting at least 40 supervised births. The degree spans 39 weeks each year and prepares you for professional practice through roleplay, scenario-based learning and placement experience. Theory and practice are woven together so you apply the knowledge you learn in the classroom to the clinical skills you are developing.
Find out if you are eligible for a £5,000 NHS training grant to help with living costs.
with Professional Practice Year
This course has the option to be taken over four years which includes a year placement in industry. Undertaking a year in industry has many benefits. You gain practical experience and build your CV, as well as being a great opportunity to sample a profession and network with potential future employers.
There is no tuition fee for the placement year enabling you to gain an extra year of experience for free.
*Only available to UK/EU students.
with Foundation Year
A Degree with a Foundation Year gives you guaranteed entry to an Undergraduate course.
Whether you’re returning to learning and require additional help and support to up-skill, or if you didn’t quite meet the grades to pursue an Undergraduate course, our Degrees with Foundation Year provide a fantastic entry route for you to work towards a degree level qualification.
With our guidance and support you’ll get up to speed within one year, and will be ready to seamlessly progress on to undergraduate study at Bedfordshire.
The Foundation Year provides an opportunity to build up your academic writing skills and numeracy, and will also cover a range of subject specific content to fully prepare you for entry to an Undergraduate degree.
This is an integrated four-year degree, with the foundation year as a key part of the course. You will need to successfully complete the Foundation Year to progress on to the first year of your bachelor’s degree.
Why study a degree with a Foundation Year?
- Broad-based yet enough depth to give you credible vocational skills
- Coverage of a variety of areas typically delivered by an expert in this area
- Gain an understanding of a subject before choosing which route you wish to specialise in
- Great introduction to further study, and guaranteed progression on to one of our Undergraduate degrees
The degrees offering a Foundation Year provide excellent preparation for your future studies.
During your Foundation Year you will get the opportunity to talk to tutors about your degree study and future career aspirations, and receive guidance on the most appropriate Undergraduate course to help you achieve this; providing you meet the entry requirements and pass the Foundation Year.
What will you study?
Studying our Midwifery BSc (Hons) course will equip you with the specialist practical skills and knowledge around universal care in pregnancy, sexual health and professional midwifery practice. To develop your understanding of the processes of childbirth, our unit in Human Development: Preconception to Birth will expose you to the anatomy and physiology of human development from conception to early childhood. You will explore how genes influence growth, development and the functioning of the human body, particularly the reproductive system, and how to screen for genetic disorders. This process will allow you to ensure the best start in life for a newborn infant. In areas of practice, you will undertake a maternity placement or simulation where you will provide care and support throughout pre and post childbirth to a minimum of three women or birthing people in our Participating in Midwifery Care unit. This will allow you to identify and develop your skills while working in a multidisciplinary team focused on antenatal, labour and postnatal care. You will also absorb the fundamental knowledge around processes in pregnancy, labour and the postpartum period while also learning to respect the culturally diverse beliefs and values of the birthing person and their families.
This ensures that you create a safe, respectful and nurturing space for the birthing person and their family. Our unit in Contributing to Midwifery Care closely links to this, where you will complete practice assessments and actively participate in the provision of continuity of care. You will build on these skills even further in our Demonstrating Proficiency in Midwifery Care unit to integrate and apply core midwifery knowledge and skills required for safe and effective practice. In doing so, you will learn to provide individualised care while also being prepared to anticipate additional needs when they occur and how to support them in our Providing Individualised Midwifery Care unit. Similarly, you will also be equipped to act, manage and escalate care in additional and emergency situations within maternity care in our Additional and First Line Management of Midwifery Care unit by learning to anticipate situations that require urgent action and immediate response, and subsequently deliver first-line management through collaborating with various teams. To add to this, you will be encouraged to act as an advocate for women, birthing people, their families and newborn infants.
You will also consider midwifery practice within a public health arena in our Enhancing Midwifery Practice Through Public Health unit where you will examine key psychological and physiological concepts that will help you develop a safe level of competence to promote a healthy pregnancy, maternal and neonatal wellbeing. As a core part of your practice, you will be equipped with the skills and knowledge to examine newborn babies while also considering the needs of the woman or birthing person and their families in our Systematic Examination of the Newborn unit. Working based on evidence, you will develop the skills to identify, analyse and interpret research evidence to make informed decisions around care and to support women and birthing people as part of our unit in Enhancing Quality and Safety Through Evidence. To ensure your delivery of specialised care, you will identify values of midwifery practice and apply professional codes and standards of behaviour to your practice in our unit - Being an Accountable, Professional Midwife. This closely links to our Developing as an Accountable, Professional Midwife unit where you will learn to review, evaluate and apply national and local guidance and policy to current maternity care.
To add to your professional skills, our unit in The Future Midwife as a Teacher and Leader will expose you to positive role modelling and leadership behaviours needed to become a midwife, teacher and leader while reflecting on your strengths and limitations alongside your ability to work with students and colleagues within teams. Finally, you will be able to demonstrate your independent skills in our Promoting Excellence: Midwifery Project. This is a great opportunity for you to focus on your personal interests in midwifery practice while demonstrating your skills in a critical study focused on a chosen topic.
Human Development: Preconception To Birth
To understand the processes of childbirth, the midwife must also have an in-depth comprehension of the processes of reproduction and the development of the fetus from conception in utero, to that of extra-uterine life.
This unit will focus on the anatomy and physiology of human development from conception to the development of the child in early childhood. You will explore how genes have an influence on the influences on growth, development and the functioning of the human body and reproductive system and how healthcare professionals screen for genetic disorders to promote the best start in life for the newborn infant.
This unit will also provide you with key skills required for learning throughout your course, including packages to support your academic development.
Developing As An Accountable, Professional Midwife
Midwives are fully accountable as the lead professional for the care and support of birthing people, newborn infants, and their families. Respecting human rights, midwives work in partnership with women, enabling their views, preferences, and decisions, and helping to strengthen their capabilities. They promote safe and effective care, always drawing on the best available evidence (NMC 2019).
This unit aims to equip you with the knowledge, skills, and behaviours to review, evaluate and apply national and local guidance and policy to current maternity care. Key features of the unit are how coordination of care is managed within the NHS and safe medications management.
Enhancing Quality And Safety Through Evidence
This unit will provide you with skills to identify, analyse, and interpret research evidence, to support women and birthing people in making informed decisions throughout their care. This unit builds on your knowledge of research fundamentals and introduces you to epidemiology, public health strategies and safeguarding.
Providing Individualised Midwifery Care
The aim of this unit is to enable you to explore the concept of individualised care across the continuum of care provided by the midwife. Midwives work in partnership to care for and support all women, birthing people, newborns, and their families. They make an important contribution to population health, promoting psychological and physical health and well-being.
Midwives optimise physiological processes, and support safe psychological, social, cultural and spiritual situations and transition to parenthood, working to promote positive outcomes and to anticipate where additional needs occur and how to support them.
The Future Midwife As A Teacher And Leader
This unit aims to develop the midwife as a colleague, and leader. It responds to the need for midwives to recognise their strengths and limitations as practitioners; the effectiveness of their interaction with students and other colleagues across and within teams in the interests of clients. It addresses the ways in which you may fulfil both formal and informal leadership roles within midwifery and the community in which you will work.
You will develop the knowledge, positive role modelling and leadership to become a midwife, a teacher and a leader. You will explore the importance of current and ongoing local, national and international research and leadership in midwifery and related fields, and how to use this knowledge to keep updated, to inform decision-making and to develop your practice. This will enable you to explore potential career pathways that may include practice, management, leadership, education, research and policy.
Domain 5 of the NMC’s Standards of Proficiency for Midwives (2019) identifies these knowledge and skill areas as critical to the future midwife, ‘enabling effective team working and promoting continuous improvement’ (NMC 2019 p26).
Systematic Examination Of The Newborn
This unit focuses on equipping you with the skills, knowledge and competencies in examination of the newborn baby. It responds to the current demands of women and families and of the midwifery service to have appropriately trained professionals to undertake this assessment in a prompt and timely manner to provide high quality continuity of care.
Throughout the unit you will explore, practice and evaluate the skill of newborn examination and your own performance. You will work to the NIPE standards and competencies which focus on screening in four areas; the heart, hips, eyes and testes (in boys).
You will explore how midwives provide an evidence-based screening examination/assessment of newborn infants, while ensuring that the needs (information, health promotion) of the woman, family and relevant others are met or safeguarded.
Through the unit content and teaching you will foster the values and attitudes of self-leadership and collaboration, to enable you to develop yourself in the assessment of newborn infants and the management of their care.
Promoting Excellence: Midwifery Project
This unit offers you the opportunity to demonstrate and develop your independent scholarly skills commensurate with the awarding of an Honours degree and the requirements of professional practice. Specifically, it offers you the following:
- time to engage in deep level critical study of a chosen topic area
- development of confidence in your ability to work independently and effectively
- an opportunity to focus your personal practice interests prior to qualification and in preparation for future practice direction
How will you be assessed?
The assessment strategy for this course is closely aligned to the teaching and learning strategy which centres around safe midwifery practice. The choice of assessments is determined by their relevance to midwifery care. You will be assessed across a range of practice settings and learning environments throughout the course.
To enhance your understanding and experiences of assessment practices, you will encounter a wide range of formative and summative assessment methods including those that enable you to undertake practice-focused tasks that have the potential to influence care delivery. Many of the assessment tasks are designed so that you can tailor them to your professional interests, experience and development needs. They are also designed so you can rehearse ways of thinking and acting that are professionally relevant. Examples include written assignments ranging from case studies and academic essays as well as assessed practice within your placements. You will be assessed in practice using a nationally recognised practice assessment document (the MORA - Midwifery Ongoing Record of Achievement) which outlines the skills and competencies required as a registered midwife.
These assessments are recorded and confirmed by a practice assessor alongside your own self-reflections on your progress. Service users and carers also contribute to your assessments. Self-assessment and reflection are expected at each point of assessment - for both theory and practice assessments. Within the MORA, learners are expected to obtain service-user feedback using the standardised feedback form supported by their practice supervisor, facilitating personal reflection during interim reviews and at the holistic assessment. To be eligible for your award of BSc (Hons) Midwifery and to register with the NMC, you must complete and provide documentary evidence of a minimum of 4,600 hours (2,310 hours in practice and 2,310 theory hours).
Careers
Graduates can go on to work as a qualified and registered midwife within the NHS, or as an independent midwife, or progress to management, research or teaching.
Entry Requirements
- 112 UCAS tariff points including 96 from at least 3 A-levels or equivalent
- GCSE grade 4/Functional Skills Level 2 Maths
- GCSE grade 4/Functional Skills Level 2 English
- Safeguarding checks, including an Enhanced DBS, and Occupational Health check are required
Entry Requirements
- 112 UCAS tariff points including 96 from at least 3 A-levels or equivalent
- GCSE grade 4/Functional Skills Level 2 Maths
- GCSE grade 4/Functional Skills Level 2 English
- Safeguarding checks, including an Enhanced DBS, and Occupational Health check are required
Fees for this course
UK 2024/25
The full-time standard undergraduate tuition fee for the Academic Year 2024/25 is £9,250 per year. You can apply for a loan from the Government to help pay for your tuition fees. You can also apply for a maintenance loan from the Government to help cover your living costs. See www.gov.uk/student-finance
Merit Scholarship
We offer a Merit Scholarship to UK students, worth £2,400* over three academic years, which is awarded to those who can demonstrate a high level of academic achievement, through scoring 120 UCAS tariff points or more.
Bedfordshire Bursary
If you aren’t eligible for the Merit Scholarship, this Bursary is there to help UK students with aspects of student living such as course costs. The Bursary will give you £1,000* over three academic years, or £1,300* if you are taking your course over four academic years (including those with a Foundation Year).
Full terms and conditions can be found here.
Alternatively if you have any questions around fees and funding please email admission@beds.ac.uk
International
The full-time standard undergraduate tuition fee for the academic year 2024/25 is £15,500 per year.
There are range of Scholarships available to help support you through your studies with us.
A full list of scholarships can be found here.
Fees for this course
UK 2024/25
The full-time standard undergraduate tuition fee for the Academic Year 2024/25 is £9,250 per year. You can apply for a loan from the Government to help pay for your tuition fees. You can also apply for a maintenance loan from the Government to help cover your living costs. See www.gov.uk/student-finance
Merit Scholarship
We offer a Merit Scholarship to UK students, worth £2,400* over three academic years, which is awarded to those who can demonstrate a high level of academic achievement, through scoring 120 UCAS tariff points or more.
Bedfordshire Bursary
If you aren’t eligible for the Merit Scholarship, this Bursary is there to help UK students with aspects of student living such as course costs. The Bursary will give you £1,000* over three academic years, or £1,300* if you are taking your course over four academic years (including those with a Foundation Year).
Full terms and conditions can be found here.
Alternatively if you have any questions around fees and funding please email admission@beds.ac.uk
International
The full-time standard undergraduate tuition fee for the academic year 2024/25 is £15,500 per year.
There are range of Scholarships available to help support you through your studies with us.
A full list of scholarships can be found here.
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