Anyone working as a midwife who could help with this?

[Sunshine511]

I am considering a career change and the possibility of becoming a midwife. Just fact finding at the moment really.

My question is, does qualifying as a midwife mean that night shifts will be essential? My husband works away a lot and we have no family nearby so I would struggle from a childcare point of view if I had to work nights.

Any help/advice much appreciated.

Thanks

You may struggle to qualify as student midwives spend a lot of time shadowing the shifts of their mentors. It is one of the reasons why I haven't been able follow up my plans of retraining, my DHs work pattern is very erratic and I don't have any other local support I could rely on.

You could get a day job theoretically, but whilst doing the degree you would almost cetainly be required to do night duty as part of your placements. Also, depending on how your trust us set up, day jobs with no in shifts might be like hens teeth

any kind of nursing requires night shifts. Its one of the main reasons I had to give it up when my marriage broke down

I'm afraid so, yes. There's only one midwife I knew who only worked days, and that was because of a health condition. If you end up working in community, nights won't be such a problem but you'll still have to do on calls sometimes overnight. It's unusual to go straight into community on qualifying, and if you did, you'd still be expected to rotate into the hospital at some point.

When you're training, you have to follow your mentor's shift patterns. Which obviously will involve working nights. At my uni, we had to do a minimum of 15 nights to qualify. Not all unis have a set number you have to do but you will be expected to work them. I don't have children but IME unis are fairly unsympathetic to child care issues. I remember a lecturer telling us off once saying that you can't use child care issues as an excuse not to go to placement.

Sorry to be a downer but if you really want to be a midwife, you will have to work nights for at least 4 years (3 years in training and then the preceptorship year afterwards). I can't offer any advice on child care but I do know a single mother with 4 children who trained and qualified. How she managed I don't know, but there must be a way round it somehow if you really want to do it.