BMidwif Midwifery

Year of entry: 2024

Course unit details:
Promoting Excellence in Midwifery (MMidwif)

Course unit fact file
Unit code NURS34112
Credit rating 10
Unit level Level 6
Teaching period(s) Semester 2
Available as a free choice unit? No

Overview

This unit aims to prepare you to promote excellence as professional midwives who make an important contribution to providing, developing and maintaining high quality and safe maternity care. The unit will enable you to reflectively develop your own philosophy for professional practice and apply this to different concepts, including leadership, safety, and personal and professional development. You will learn through a variety of blended learning approaches, including in-person and online, small group work, guest speakers, and providing and receiving peer feedback.

Aims

This unit aims to:

  • Prepare learners for the role of the midwife in promoting excellence as a leader, change-maker and partner with women/birthing people and other professionals.
    develop and foster learners’ personal philosophy for professional and ethical practice and life-long learning.

Teaching and learning methods

The intended learning outcomes (ILOs) and aims are all constructively aligned to ensure the teaching and assessment methods support the learners’ achievement of these to the highest standard. The assessment ensures that all aims and ILOs can be demonstrated as met during the assessment task and in order to facilitate learners’ understanding of the ILOs the following teaching methods will be used:

  • Flipped classroom approach
  • Seminars and small group work
  • Peer feedback (formative)
  • Lectures
  • Specialist speakers
  • Online lectures
  • Online seminars
  • Directed study
  • Guided reading and independent study

Knowledge and understanding

  • Demonstrate a conceptual understanding of midwifery leadership concepts to improve and develop midwifery practice, and safety in maternity services.
  • Systematically reflect on your personal philosophy of professional and ethical midwifery practice.

Intellectual skills

  • Acknowledge and appraise contexts in which maternity services operate.
  • Critically analyse the impact of individuals and organisational mechanisms on safety in maternity services.
  • Systematically reflect on and analyse your individual professional practice and learning needs, fitness to practice and willingness to change, to inform your personal development.

 

Practical skills

  • Exhibit and reflect on leadership skills, communicating effectively and appropriately with a range of individuals.
  • Assess, create and maintain safe environments of care, and respond effectively to complex or challenging situations.

 

Transferable skills and personal qualities

  • Demonstrate the skills and behaviours to effectively and appropriately respond to and participate in evidence-based change management in maternity services. 
  • Reflect on personal qualities and development needs in preparation for entering the midwifery workforce.

 

Assessment methods

Patchwork Text

Create a mini-patchwork text that incorporates the formative reflective journal and 1 summative reflective patch ‘stitched’ together with one final overarching patch. Within the summative patch analyse one area of midwifery practice. The stitching patch requires you to reflect on and analyse your learning experiences to articulate your personal philosophy for practice.

Feedback methods

Formative

Reflective journal to be kept throughout the unit and used to facilitate peer/academic discussion and feedback.

Recommended reading

  • Bass, J., Fenwick, J. and Sidebotham, M. (2017). Development of a Model of Holistic Reflection to facilitate transformative learning in student midwives. Women and birth: journal of the Australian College of Midwives, 30(3), pp.227–235.
  • Bolton, G. and Delderfield, R. (2018). Reflective practice: writing and professional development. Fifth edition. London: SAGE.
  • Downe, S., Byrom, S. and Simpson, L. (2011). Essential midwifery practice: leadership, expertise and collaborative working. Chichester, West Sussex, United Kingdom: Wiley-Blackwell.
  • Gray, M., Kitson-Reynolds, E. and Cummins, A. (2019). Starting life as a midwife: an international review of transition from student to practitioner. Cham: Springer Nature.
  • Kemp, J., Maclean, G.D. and Moyo, N. (2021). Midwifery Leadership. In Global Midwifery: Principles, Policy and Practice. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 163–184.
  • Northouse, PG, (2021) Leadership: Theory and Practice. 9th Edition, Sage, Thousand Oaks.
  • Stanley, D. (2017). Clinical leadership in nursing and healthcare: values into action. Second edition. Chichester, West Sussex, England: Wiley-Blackwell.
  • Turner, P. (2019). Leadership in Healthcare . 1st ed. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.
  • West, M., Armit, K., Loewenthal, L., Eckert, R., West, T. and Lee, A. (2015) Leadership and Leadership Development in Healthcare: The Evidence Base. Lo

Study hours

Scheduled activity hours
Lectures 18
Seminars 4
Independent study hours
Independent study 25

Teaching staff

Staff member Role
Alice Ciolino Unit coordinator

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