Strengthening midwifery education
Building competence and confidence in midwifery education
Every midwifery student needs to graduate with competence and confidence to provide quality maternal and neonatal care.
Simulation-based education is key to make this happen.
THE CHALLENGE
The world needs more midwives
Every year, 140 million babies are born. To ensure all births are safe, the world needs over 900,000 more midwives.
The International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) has developed guidelines for how to implement competency-based, quality education. But the lack of well-trained educators, limited access to clinical sites, and few opportunities to attain and retain skills remain challenging.
The opportunity
Enhancing education coverage and quality
The 2023 State of the World's Midwifery Report states that fully resourcing midwife-led care by 2035 could prevent 67% of maternal deaths, 64% of newborn deaths, and 65% of stillbirths. Universal midwife coverage could save 4.3 million lives annually by 2035.
Together with partners, we work towards this future by expanding midwifery education capacity and improving quality in midwifery education.
Making Changes Globally
For large-scale and sustainable change, it is necessary to work with dedicated partners and government agencies. We’re working with partners worldwide to strengthen the quality of midwifery education.
As a member of the Alliance to Improve Midwifery Education (AIME), we work together with the WHO, ICM, UNFPA, UNICEF, and other partners to raise the quality of midwifery education by developing new training resources, guidelines, evidence, and advocacy to address gaps in midwifery education.
Placeholder ICM collaboration
ICM Competencies tool
Midwifery education in India
In India, we’re working with Jhpiego, the Fernandez Foundation, Aastrika Foundation, and others to support the government of India in training and educating India’s first cadre of 86,000 midwives.
The Government of India is establishing 14 National Midwifery Training Institutes linked to 10 State Midwifery Training Institutes. With our partners, we want to develop midwifery faculty, and have skills practice and simulation institutionalized at these training centers.
Establishing midwifery education in Nepal
Nepal established midwifery education in 2016, but even with new institutions, there were significant gaps.
In collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Population, GIZ, WHO, UNICEF, and national professional associations, we worked to address these.
This included integrating simulation-based training into the national midwifery curricula, establishing simulation labs, and training faculty in simulation methodology.
We’ve been seeing change. Student and faculty skills performance has more than doubled. More than 100 new midwives have graduated, and 300 midwifery students have been trained. This collaboration is now expanding to nursing and medical students.
Introducing Team-Training for Nurses in Zanzibar
At the SUZA School of Nursing in Zanzibar, faculty and students have been supported with a new simulation center which has been designed and filled based off the competency needs in their nurse and midwifery curricula.
In collaboration with Wajamama and Ariadne Labs, we’ve been shifting their learning methods away from lectures to hands-on, team-based learning, and building up simulation competency for long-term change.
