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APPENDIX 'B'
MIDWIFERY TRAINING
The Acting Medical Officer of Health reported as follows to the Social Services (& Children's)
Committee on 29th June, 1970
Attention is drawn to the Report of the Working Party on the Future Development of
Midwifery Training which suggests a radical alteration of the existing course of training. At present
a two-part course covers a training time of one year and the domiciliary component of the course
takes place during the last three months of the Part II training period. Statutory lectures have been
given to student midwives during the last few years by the Deputy Medical Officer of Health and
the Principal Medical Officer.
Partly owing to the trend towards more hospital deliveries, which leaves fewer domiciliary
cases for training purposes, and partly due to the evidence from two pilot schemes at Southampton
and Newcastle that the new single integrated courses produce better midwives, the Central
Midwives Board advocates the extension of this new single 52-week course to other areas.
A suggestion is now made that the Queen Mary's Hospital Midwives Training School and the
London Borough of Bexley Local Health Authority should combine to provide such a course
which might be known as the Queen Mary's Hospital and London Borough of Bexley Midwifery
Training Scheme. The course would fall into three periods covering a total of 12 calendar months
and the participation of the local authority would consist of several lectures towards the end of the
first period and responsibility for the whole of the second period. With new entrant pupils every
three months these arrangements would apply four times each year. The first introductory period
of the training would be spent in hospital.
The second period would last 12 weeks during which the student midwife would receive
clinical instruction and practical experience of domiciliary midwifery under the direct supervision
of a midwife teacher. She would also become acquainted with the community health and social
services that are available to the mother and thus become more aware of the complex issues
associated with modern midwifery practice. The final period in hospital would be largely clinical in
character.
The community period would fall into two roughly equal parts, one clinical and the other
theoretical. In-service training would include lectures given by the Authority's medical and nursing
staff, a visiting medical specialist in venereal diseases, a home help organiser, a probation officer, a
senior mental welfare officer, a children's officer a family caseworker and a public health inspector.
Practical demonstrations and visits to see the appropriate services in operation would be arranged
especially to see those concerned with day minding, day nurseries, fostering, adoption, care of
deprived children, children in need of care, and family planning. The detailed programme would be
submitted for the approval of the Central Midwives Board with the intention of putting it into
operation on or after April 1971.
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