Postgraduate Midwifery Program – Consolidation of Midwifery Practice
Program
The Postgraduate Midwifery Program is specifically designed for Registered Nurses who have consolidated their nursing practice in the acute care setting and completed a Graduate Diploma of Midwifery/Post Graduate Degree. We recognise that your needs and objectives in a graduate midwifery program are unique and we have designed a program that ensures consolidation of your midwifery practice.
This program is twelve months in duration. You will have the opportunity to participate in TeamCare to gain experience in the provision of care for women during pregnancy, labour and birth and the postnatal period. If you are a registered nurse wishing to study midwifery to register as a midwife, please see the postgraduate midwifery clinical placements page.
Duration
The program is 53 weeks in duration, beginning in February or August 2025.
The split intake allows us to employ more graduate midwives and provide more support to participants in the program.
The Women’s graduate programs in 2025 provide a full-time (1 full time equivalent (FTE)) or part time (0.8 or 0.9 FTE) option.
The Women’s appreciates that the decision to undertake a graduate program on a full time or part time basis is individual. Some of the benefits of completing a graduate program on a full-time basis include:
- Increased contact hours accelerates integration to the world of work, and the development of clinical skill, capability and confidence as nurse and/or midwife
- Enjoy more take home pay to put toward things of personal importance or value
- Accrue the benefit of additional annual leave – full time employees accrue 6 weeks annual leave per annum
- Opt-in to gain an accrued paid day off (ADO)* each month – this provides 13 paid days off per year.Note: *based on an 80 hour per fortnight contract
- Additional take home pay means further growth to your superannuation including optimising the benefits of compounding interest over time
Postgraduate midwives have their 12-month graduate program split into two (2) – block rotations and rotating Team Care.
Postgraduate midwives will participate in block rotations in their first six (6) months to the following areas:
- Birth Centre (3 months)
- Antenatal Clinic
- Complex Antenatal Ward
- Elective Caesarean days
- Postnatal wards
Postgraduates midwives will then move to a rotating Team Care model for the second six (6) months of their program, to continue consolidating all skills across all clinical areas.
Professional Development days are provided throughout the year, occurring more frequently early in the year.
These days are tailored to meet the specific needs of your graduate group and cover a broad range of topics including:
- Violence against women
- Reproductive loss
- Mental health first aid
- Working with women who have drug and alcohol issues
- Breastfeeding foundations
- Fetal Surveillance Education Program (FSEP)
...and many more.
The Professional Development days are complemented with individual tutorials and workshops that promote creative and reflective midwifery best practice.
In addition to this, the Women’s offers an abundance of learning opportunities. We provide a comprehensive range of services available to women, many specialist practitioners and a variety of education programs available to staff.
We understand the importance of regular feedback and provide a structured three-month performance review program. Together, we discuss your progress and identify ongoing learning needs to help you consolidate and develop your midwifery practice.
- The Program Coordinator’s role is to support, counsel and mentor graduate midwives.
- A team of Clinical Support Midwives is willing and able to guide in the clinical setting. The Clinical Support Midwives' role is to orientate, support and guide novice practitioners throughout the year.
- Each placement provides Graduate Midwives a supernumerary time appropriate to that area.
Annual leave will be allocated during the program to recharge your batteries.
The Women's supports the rights of women to make individual decisions related to their health and well-being. This also includes making available pregnancy termination services. In your role as a postgraduate midwife you may care for women undergoing termination of pregnancy and, included in your care, you may be required to administer the first medication in this process. If you have any concerns in this regard you may need to rethink whether the Women's is the right hospital choice for completion of your Postgraduate Midwife program.
The 2025 Graduate Midwife Information Evening is scheduled for Monday 27 May 2024 (from 5pm-7pm), via webinar.
The link to the Webex event will be available on this page closer to the date.