Placements

Students spend 20 weeks per year learning the practice of midwifery which totals 2310 hours across the programme. You will be provided with a range of placements that will allow you to fulfil the professional requirements for registration and the academic requirement set with each module. Our placement partners work closely with us to enable you to develop your confidence and proficiency across the course, encouraging you to perform increasingly challenging and complex activities until you are considered competent for registration.

During all clinical placements, students will undertake rostered practice in a supernumerary capacity. Where the opportunity is available students in all years are involved in supporting women and birthing people in a variety of settings such as labour/delivery/recovery and postnatal wards, hospital wards, free standing/ integrated birth centres and in the home setting.

Midwifery students actively engage in learning activities during their working shifts. The activities are directed by the proficiencies, inter-professional capabilities, and learning outcomes that the student must achieve during each year of the course. During this time the student will collate a professional portfolio of evidence/assessment of practice documentation to demonstrate proficiency and completion of the NMC proficiencies for registered midwives.

Each student will be supported by practice supervisor/s. A practice supervisor is an appropriately prepared professional who oversees the student and directs their learning activities, acting as a positive role model. They support the student in collating evidence for the practice assessor, provide feedback for development and contribute to the assessment of the student.

Practice supervisors will provide regular verbal formative feedback to the student on their performance, facilitated through the portfolio/assessment of practice documentation. They will provide evidence to enable the practice assessor to make an objective decision of the student's performance. 

Students may work with an individual supervisor or teams of practice supervisor’s dependent upon the nature of the practice area. They will be allocated to the student by the Learning Environment Manager (LEM). 

A nominated Practice Assessor is a midwifery registrant with the NMC who objectively reviews and verifies the student's evidence of achievement of the proficiencies and programme learning outcomes and enables progression to the following year of study. The nominated practice assessor changes with each part of the programme.

The practice assessors will assess the student based on the evidence the student independently collates and using the Midwifery Ongoing Record of Achievement (MORA). 

The LEM is a named midwife who is responsible for the allocation of students and maintenance of the learning environment to ensure a positive experience and support of supervisors.

Link Lecturers provide additional support for students, supervisors and assessors to ensure fair and consistent assessment of the student. Working with LEMs, supervisors and assessors to make available information and resources that enable students to be empowered to take responsibility for their learning. A student may also contact the Link Lecturer to request additional support and guidance. Link Lecturers will collate information on student evaluations and be available, where necessary, to support the monitoring and response to evaluations if required. Collaborating with placement providers to identify and take forward areas for development to enhance student learning in practice, reporting as necessary to the Director of Placement Learning and Subject Area Placement Leads.

This team is made up of experienced practice and academic assessors who are not directly involved in the assessment of the student but provide guidance for supervisors and assessors when supporting students who are failing to progress.

A nominated academic assessor, liaising with the practice assessor, will collate and confirm the student's performance with regards to their achievement of proficiencies and compliance with The Code - Professional standards of practice and behaviour for nurses, midwives and nursing associates (NMC, 2018) prior to progression. The nominated academic assessor will not have a role as practice supervisor or practice assessor for the student they assess.

Supervising and assessing students in practice events are held at the end of each year. These events offer the opportunity for practice assessors, supervisors, academic assessors and service users to review evidence of the assessment of practice, discuss effective and supportive approaches to supervision and assessment with a view to learning lessons and sharing good practice. This information will feedforward to the Curriculum and Practice Learning Partnership Group for further discussion. This will enable quality oversight and improvement for the assessment of practice learning on a continuous improvement premise.