Would you hire a newly qualified independent midwife

[belgianmama]

I want to use MN to do a little market research here. I'm a student midwife and I'm thinking about going independent. Considering the current job situation in the NHS, I am thinking of doing it sooner rather than later. Would you feel happy to employ a newly qualified midwife as your independent midwife? Any reactions/suggestions would be nice. Thank you.

not if I knew she was newly qualified! Sorry, but no matter how good your training and exam results, nothing beats real life experience! If there are really no jobs, could you "attach" yourself to a more experienced independent midwife for a couple of years, or look into joining an independent group?

why not do doula-ing rather than MW ing for six months and then pull out yoru MW card and put your prices up

What about becoming a maternity nurse and earning £750 per week? You would first have to get some neo natal experience and then you could get started. Much better pay than the NHS.

Chances are that, as a newly qualified midwife, you wouldn't be able to get the appropriate insurance to work independently.

From your own point of view, surely you want a lot of experience under your belt before you put yourself out there as an independent. As a pregnant woman, I would want assurances that my midwife was sufficiently experienced to be able to recognise the vast majority of signs which indicate that something might be going wrong. Training alone will not provide you with that knowledge.

I only clicked once, I'm sure I did!! So how on earth has my thread duplicated itself? Hm doulaing for a bit and then going into independent midwifery. I'm not sure how that would stand by the NMC or Midwives' Rules to be honest. It's an idea I suppose, but I think I'd need hands on experience from day 1 though.
I'm not sure if maternity nurses are very in demand around me either. I also have spend 3 years on a course that has truly taken over my life and so I do not want to waste all that knowledge I've gathered doing it.
Thanks for all the suggestions though.

I don't think any independent midwife has insurance any more.

Can you do bank work etc to get experience? Or maybe work for one of the independent midwifery practices, so you'd be one of two at a birth? I'd be nervous having a newly qualified midwife be the only person attending a home birth, which, ime, is what most people want an independent midwife for.

NQC, I was thinking about finding myself a partner for support and advise. I was hoping to be able to team up with a more experienced midwife in my area, although there really aren't all that many independent midwives around where I live.

Well, you'll need a supervisor anyway, won't you? Or advisor? I don't remember the right word for it.

But yeah, I'd think you'd do better paired up, anyway. You can do the antenatal and postnatal appointments separately, provide holiday cover for each other, and do labours together? There seem to be a lot of midwife teams about, both formal and informal. (Ok, there are a lot of independent midwives in my neighbourhood.)

The midwife I had, did bank work when things were quiet. It meant she knew her way around the local hospitals, and knew the staff, and made her a much stronger independent midwife.

I would Belg'. But then I was keen for an unassisted birth and an Indie MW was my compromise when DH flatly refused.

I could tell within minutes of meeting my three various mws that we'd get on really well.