Our Students

We are actively involved in the training and development of new midwives. Midwifery is a fast growing profession with much need for midwives to teach and pass on their important skill sets. We may have more than one student involved in the practice at a time becoming a midwife. These students will be in different stages of their training.

The Normal Childbearing Students 

These students are in their first clinical placement. They have completed 1.5 years of academic work and are ready to put their learned skills into practice. These students are closely monitored by their supervising midwife and are busy working to master the following skills:

• Prenatal Education and counseling for birth
• Provide labour support to you during childbirth
• Catching/delivering your baby with the help of their supervising mentor until they have mastered this skill and no longer need assistance.
• Clinical skills of taking blood pressures, blood work, palpating pregnant bellies to figure out the correct baby position, vaginal exams, working alongside their mentor to learn about suturing any vaginal tears that occur, IV administration and finding baby's heartbeat.
• Providing key information and education to you in the postpartum period regarding normal baby care and methods of feeding your newborn
• For this placement, they will be absorbing a lot of information and learning about the lives of both midwives and the women we have in care.

Final Placement (8-10 months) 

The senior year of the midwifery program consists of 3 separate stages:

1. Consultations and Complications: (C&C) 

This placement is the beginning of their final 12 months of clinical work. C&C placement is intended for them to become oriented with this new city, new hospital, and new caseload of women. They will be working hard in these three months to get to know our clients and become integrated into the practice. Please be patient with them while they are learning how Wind Rose Midwifery likes to provide care to you. By this point, they have caught many babies unassisted, and have had experience with most of the clinical skills required to be a midwife. Their mentor will be working alongside them to help them integrate and to become familiar with their learning styles. At this stage they are able to see you in the postpartum course by themselves at certain times. They always report to their supervising midwife immediately after all of their assessments.

2. Maternal and Newborn Pathology: 

This placement is where they do most of their learning. They have integrated and usually know our women well. This will make it easier for them to provide care to you. In this placement they are working well in the role as the primary midwife as well as the back-up midwife. They are spending much of this placement learning about complications of pregnancy and birth and how to properly consult with obstetricians for assessments and treatment.

3. Clerkship: 

This is the final 4 months of placement prior to graduation. In this placement they are functioning as another midwife in the practice. They conduct births almost solely by themselves with their preceptor in house/hospital to guide them as needed) and they may see you many times in the postpartum period to help you with baby care and breastfeeding/supplementing help as needed. 

Important Information

We encourage you to discuss our students with your midwives. We welcome feedback and understand (as we were students once too) how important it is for you to know exactly what the role of the student entails. 

Often our students answer your pages so you may receive a phone call back from them first. Rest assured that they phone their mentor directly and discuss all concerns and advice with us. If we have more information to add, the student or midwife may call you back to discuss this. 

Our students work closely with us for a long time so we are generally very aware of their strengths and areas for improvement. We love teaching and thanks to you, we can help our students transition into excellent compassionate and dynamic midwives!