Midwife here! I feel your pain, and just wanted to say you're not alone. Thinking about leaving the profession can be so daunting. Unfortunately, I was forced to leave and take myself off the register in early 2019, after a mental breakdown/burnout partly caused by work. I was off sick with my mental health for 4 months before I left. I was so broken I was adamant I would never go back. I'd been qualified 5 years at that point.
I spent my sick leave looking for a new job, and moved into a private health company, handling their clinical complaints, eventually moving into the clinical governance department.
Then covid hit, and I had this pull/calling back into the profession. Thankfully, I had enough evidence to revalidate and get myself back on the register without having to go back to uni. I went back in 2021, back to the hospital I was working for when I went off sick, and it was like I never left. I worked clinically for a few months, then moved into a B6 Risk Midwife role. I'm on maternity leave at the moment, but just prior to starting my mat leave, I was promoted to Quality & Safety Lead Midwife for the unit, a Mon-Fri generally office based role which I'm so passionate about, and feel like I've been working towards my whole career!! I also qualified as a PMA in my first year back working clinically.
Have you also considered roles within your maternity unit? Specialist roles like:
-Safeguarding
-Perinatal Mental Health
-Sonography
-Antenatal clinic
-Health promotion (e.g. BMI/stop smoking clinics)
-Pelvic floor specialist midwife
-Risk/quality improvement.
-Lactation consultant.
Or roles within your Trust that you could move sideways into, such as:
-Trust wide Risk/quality improvement department
-Phlebotomy
-Infection control
-In our Trust it is possible for Midwives to work as NICU nurses.
Or roles external to Midwifery, but will still rely on valuable skills such as:
-Clinical governance/complaints
-GP Practice management
-Aesthetics e.g. Botox/fillers etc.
-Fertility nursing (private or NHS)
-Complimentary therapies for midwives e.g. Acupuncture, moxibustion, hypnobirthing-there is a franchise company in the UK. I think start up costs to do the courses are about £3k.
-NCT (not personally a fan of the NCT but some midwives do move into this role).
I felt so scared when I explored options outside the NHS. It was all I'd known since leaving school, as I qualified when I was 22, but when I started to look, I was pleasantly surprised as to how transferable the skills I had learnt were to outside the NHS.
❤️