DD wants to be a midwife not a doctor

[SingingAvocado]

Please don't condemn this post for bragging, as it isn't the intention at all. My DD (y12) wants to be a midwife and I think she'll be a great one. I've seen her face light up in the skills rooms at uni open days and she has learnt a lot from listening to podcasts, volunteering etc. Her college (and DH) thinks she is underselling herself (flattering), she will quickly get bored and that she is getting the grades (she's taking bio and chem A levels) and could and should be an obs and gynae doctor. She says they are different roles, that she is fed up of midwives not having the same value as doctors, that she wants to see a woman through the entire pregnancy and develop a rapport, not just be parachuted in in an emergency, and that she doesn't want to train for 10 years to get to where she will be in 3 years as a midwife. But all this talk is causing her to waver ever so slightly. She'd hate them to be proved right. Has anyone experienced something similar?

Or call radiographers phlebotomists?

She is interested and motivated to be a midwife and that's the main thing. An ob/gyn is very different. They see women who have medical problems. Midwives are more often involved in the care of women who don't have medical problems, and when they do, they are specific to pregnancy and birth, not gynae problems in general that are occurring outside of pregnancy/birth.

Let her do what she wants and support her.

I fully agree she should pursue midwifery, but you need to check admissions and routes in. A rep from a large uni (possibly Nottingham) told me recently that 100% of their midwifery course came with substantial nursing/health care/care experience lasting several years, and there were no spaces for fresh from school 18 year olds.

I fully agree she should pursue midwifery, but you need to check admissions and routes in.

of the DD’s daughter is 17/18 and serious about this… she should check

i imagine the midwives where @NotDonna worked weren’t pissed off. Just baffled by her 😆

To add; their advice was to make sure at least one space on UCAS is used for adult nursing; there is routes into midwifery from it with far more likelihood of being accepted as an 18 year old.

If she wants to be a midwife she’ll be a terrible doctor, totally different roles. Also becoming a doctor isn’t really about intelligence (I am one) it’s about persistence. You keep going and going and going long past the point when other health professions are comfortably settled in their career. If you don’t have the stomach for that it doesn’t matter how smart you are.

I do think it must be very frustrating and confronting to not be able to be ‘parachuted in’ and know that someone could die because you didn’t develop the skills to save them. But I’m one of the ones who are ‘parachuted in’ (just not in O&G). I’m glad I dedicated decades, all of my time, all of my money, everything I could give, because every now and again I stand between someone and the grave.

@Newsenmum they’re friends - it’s cool don’t worry. @FunnyFinch i call doctors much worse 😉

It was a joke, I don’t. We seriously have a lot of respect for each other.

I do not blame her for not wanting to be a dr!!

God she sounds amazing

My mother wanted me to be a doctor rather than a midwife and she made it abundantly clear right up to the day she died at 94 what a disappointment I was.
ffs don’t do this.
It was compounded when I didn’t marry a doctor either.

A few points to consider.

First,!it's possible that there will be a decrease in demand for traditional midwifery due to falling birth rates and an increase in surgical births - c sections on the increase which is a trend likely to continue.

Second, it's not necessarily the case that being an obstetrician means no developing relationship on a continuous basis with a patient - there's private practice or practice abroad where an obstetrician looks after a patient throughout - very rewarding I imagine and in such cases, the obstetrician will handle many routine as well as ' panic stations' births.

A third one - it's all very well making a decision about one's vocation and prioritising career satisfaction/ personal fulfilment over money, but she ought to do so in full possession of the facts and sacrifices she may have to make on standard of living and status in consequence. Has she looked in to long term earnings and set those against average house prices etc ? You'll see many posters on mumsnet bemoaning their low earnings and early career choices made using heart over head.

Obs and gynae doctors are surgeons. Its wildly different to being a midwife. It's ridiculous to suggest that if you want to be one you would automatically have the skillset or interest for the other.

Stes 12.......

Haha ok fair enough!

No, she is in YEAR 12. She’s 17.

I personally think your daughter has a good head on her young shoulders and it's admirable. She will not be "underselling" herself as a midwife. That's quite insulting to midwives. It suggests your partner thinks that being a doctor is 'better'.

Midwives and doctors do vastly different things. The day to day job and responsibilities are vastly different. It seems your daughter understands this more than your husband.

It's fantastic that she is so interested and keen to come a midwife.

She is absolutely right to not want to get bogged down in 10+ years of study and training in vastly different areas of medicine.

After some years of experience she can do various courses to become a consultant midwife and have prescribing rights etc if she wants to.

Also, it is a good idea for her to ask midwives their experience if she hasn't already.

This is a good platform.

You could do an 'ask me anything' about being a midwife.

I'm sure you'd get tonnes of comments here about the daily job/placements/uni, pros and cons etc

it’s not surprising she’s questioning herself given her SCHOOL and her FATHER is undermining the profession.

and i have read and reread the OP and… very much fence sitting

No problem with your DD choosing Midwifery over Medicine as long as it is an informed decision. They are both valuable roles. However I don't understand your statement "she doesn't want to train for 10 years to get to where she will be in 3 years as a midwife." If she believes this, she really ought to do more research. An Obs & Gynae Consultant is performing a vastly different role to a midwife, the 10 years plus study is for a reason and the "parachuting in" can be the difference between life and death.

I am a midwife with 5 years of experience. I work in a large metropolitan area and I have just moved into a 40% tax bracket (The fact that there is a shortage of midwives with the money we earn as a reflection of the stress of our jobs unfortunately). However I love my job and I am not going anywhere. As for the C-section - you still need a midwife to do the pre-op tasks, receive the baby, look after the baby whilst mum is on operating table, recover mum, support breastfeeding, do the birth notification, look after mum and baby till discharge etc. There will always be a work for a midwife even in a country with 100% CS rate. For a start, obs and gynae doctors aren't trained to look after a newborn, midwives are

Can she arrange a job shadow with both op - spend a few days with someone in each role to find out what each is actually like?