Students apply midwifery knowledge and skills gained in previous units to undertake professional practice in a maternity practice setting. Aligned with quality and safety principles, students will exhibit the provision of safe, woman-centred care within an appropriate scope of practice. Placements occur under the supervision of a registered midwife who provides feedback to students on their professional practice. Before commencing placement, students will be asked to provide mandatory documentation for allocations as part of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) requirements for midwifery students. Students will undertake 160 hours of placement following successful completion of the Midwifery Care 1 – Developing Midwifery Practice unit. Students also continue the Continuity of Care program, recruiting a further two (2) women. This enables opportunities for the midwifery student to share a therapeutic relationship with each woman to learn about the uniqueness of childbearing from the individual woman’s perspective.
On successful completion of this unit, students will be able to:
The assessment tasks link the learning outcomes and graduate capabilities. Each piece of assessment for the unit relates to students integrating theoretical knowledge and skills to the woman and her baby’s care across pregnancy, labour and birth and post-birth care and is documented in the Practice Portfolio. Professional midwifery appraisals scaffold experiential learning by midwife facilitators providing formative and summative feedback and supported learning to achieve interim and final learning objectives as stated at the commencement of practice placement by each individual student. The Continuity of Care report details evidence-based reflective learning of student’s individual learning of childbearing from a woman’s experience which is critical to locating beginning practice in a philosophy of woman-centred care. All assessments are undertaken within the scheduled timing of the placement.
This unit is studied as part of the following course(s):