Midwifery Placements

Your placements will see you work in both the hospital environment and out in the community. In your third year you will take responsibility for a small caseload of women.

You will be supervised by a practice supervisor and practice assessor from the organisation for which you work. A typical practice supervisor and practice assessor will be a registered midwife who has received training for the role. Please note that he or she will not always be with you. If you have a problem you should first go to your practice supervisor, then your practice assessor. If you do not get satisfaction from either of these, please contact your Academic assessor, academic tutor, or the University placement team.

Throughout your placements, you will have to work for the stated number of weeks and demonstrate competencies in a range of areas to the satisfaction of your practice assessor. As and when you are successful your practice assessor will officially 'sign off' each competency. These will be recorded in your assessment of practice document, which you are given in your first year and keep for the duration of your programme

You will be expected to work the normal shift pattern of the organisation to which you are sent. For example, if your colleagues work weekends and nights on 12 hour shifts then you will do the same. Similarly, if your colleagues work 8 hour days then so will you. However, it is worth noting that you will not be required to work on public holidays unless you wish - this will not count as ‘double time' though.

It is your responsibility to get to and from your placements. Having a car is a very good idea, especially for community placements.

If you cannot get to your placement on any given day you must contact your place of work as soon as possible to let them know you will be absent, record the absence on your time sheet, and also email your academic tutor to inform him or her about your absence.

This all depends on how many hours you have missed. It may be possible to make up the hours by simply working a bit longer in the remainder of your placement. If this is not possible then you should work with your programme lead to find an appropriate way to make up the time lost.