Midwife Mondays 2: Sphygmomanometers & Homework!

The first week of lectures has, frankly, flown by! You know that feeling; Part of me feels like I’ve been here 10 minutes, and another part of me feels like I’ve been here for months already!

After our induction week we were all absolutely buzzing to get started with actual lectures this week – then I started thinking about it, how exactly do they start to teach you to be a midwife?? I mean, theres a LOT to learn!!!

It turns out, I needn’t have been concerned at all. They have planned this course to a tee!

We started on Monday with an introduction to our first module and generally having a bit of a casual chat about how it all works, assessments, paperwork etc etc. They also gave us a huge pile of anatomy and physiology workbooks. Obviously, we need to know our human Anatomy & Physiology inside out, but as this is adult education, Anatomy & Physiology is something we study in our own time. It goes without saying that they cover a lot of it in passing but it is down to our own discipline to learn it properly – eek! I have a feeling that A&P, tea and comfys-time is gonna become a key part of my routine!

On Tuesday we were learning about how to diagnose pregnancy and how to work out the estimated due date – it’s something that we will do so much through the course of our career and we’ve learned it! Obviously we have so many more skills to learn throughout the three years, but ticking one off felt good! 🙂

When we are in uni, we are only in 4 days a week, with self-study expected on our day off – it also means that the students who have kids can spend some time with them! At the moment, that day off is Wednesday – perfect for reading over what we learnt on the Monday & Tuesday and pre-reading for the lectures on the Thursday & Friday. As the workload increases, I know that this Wednesday off is going to save me A LOT of stress!

On Thursday we learnt all about Maternal Obs, including taking manual blood pressure with a sphygmomanometer (try saying that when you’re drunk!) – needless to say, this is something I am going to need to practise A LOT….according to what I could make out through the stethoscope, I’m pretty sure I should be dead….! Ah well, gotta start somewhere, right?!

Friday was a day focussed on research and evidence – one of our first year assessments is a critique of an existing piece of research, so we have, on average, one day a week working on that module until we go out on placement, and then we pick it up again in the new year.

One of the absolute highlights of the week however, came completely unexpectedly. Though we have been told which hospitals we are going to be based at for our placements, we hadn’t been told which department we were going to be working in for our first placement in just under a month’s time. At the end of the day on Friday, we were all packing up our bags and completely out of the blue, we were told what our first placement setting would be. I am absolutely buzzing that my first placement is going to be out on community. So as of the beginning of November, I will be shadowing a community midwife for 6 weeks! Too exciting! I can’t wait to share what I get up to with you all on here.

(Regarding sharing placement stuff with you all, there are times I may be slightly vague about when or where something happened, or will phrase something in the hypothetical. I had a chat with the course tutors this week about documenting this journey on my blog and they have given me a few tips to make sure I stay on the right side of the confidentiality and professionalism line – they were all so so supportive about it, which I am absolutely thrilled about! ‘Midwife Mondays’ has approval! YAY!)

Right, I’m off to a day in the Skills Lab – TOO EXCITED!!!!

Image by Toa Heftiba

To read last week’s “Midwife Mondays” post, click here!