Midwifery
This degree prepares you for a lifelong career, linking theory with hands-on experience. Learn vital skills in health promotion, public health, law, and ethics, alongside clinical placements in local health boards, providing holistic, woman-centred care throughout pregnancy, birth, and beyond. Applications for this course are currently closed.
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Key Course Details
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UCAS Code
B720
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Start Date
September
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Location
Pontypridd
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Campus Code
A
Fees
Home students
£9,535*
- Full-time fees are per year. Part-time fees are per 20 credits.
Prepare for a rewarding midwifery career with practical midwifery skills from year one. Experience clinical placements, apply theoretical knowledge, and provide holistic, woman-centred care.
DESIGNED FOR
This course is for you if you're passionate about caring for women, birthing individuals and families. You'll get an authentic experience through hands-on placements, learn essential midwifery skills, and study in a professional, safe, inclusive environment where you’re supported in every step.
Accredited by
- The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC)
Career paths
- Hospital-based midwifery
- Community midwifery
- Perinatal mental health
- Research
- Education/academia
Skills taught
- Professionalism and compassionate leadership
- Autonomy
- Practical midwifery skills
- Decision making
- Law and ethics
Course Highlights
Module Overview
Experience a dynamic blend of theory and hands-on practice. Over three years, you'll gradually build your skills and knowledge, becoming a confident and competent midwife. Complete the course and you'll be ready to join the professional register (NMC) and start making a real impact.
In Year One, you'll learn basic midwifery skills and foundational care practices, focusing on health promotion, life sciences, and professionalism. You'll also build communication skills and confidence in clinical settings.
Promoting Health and Wellbeing
Explore health promotion, prevention, and protection, and understand the midwife's role from local to global perspectives.
Developing Professionalism in Midwifery
Learn about professionalism in midwifery, focusing on effective communication and interpersonal skills.
Normal Midwifery Practice
Build an understanding of essential care aspects in normal midwifery to support your practical skills.
Sciences Applied to Midwifery
Study anatomy, physiology, and other factors critical to midwifery practice, including psychological and cognitive aspects.
Developing Confidence in Practice
Prepare for practice-based learning, focusing on safe and effective clinical skills.
In Year Two, you'll tackle more complex midwifery tasks, like managing emergencies, understanding professional and legal issues, and examining newborns. You'll deepen your evidence-based knowledge to make informed decisions in practice.
Assessment and Management of Emergency and Complex Situations
Develop skills to identify, assess, and manage emergencies and complications in midwifery and neonatal care.
Professional, Legal, and Ethical Issues in Midwifery
Learn to evaluate and apply knowledge on professional, legal, and ethical issues in midwifery practice.
Evidence-Based Practice
Evaluate and apply research and audit findings to improve midwifery care based on evidence.
The Role of the Midwife in Examination of the Newborn
Gain skills to conduct thorough health and physical assessments of newborns.
Informed Decision Making in Practice
Enhance your skills and confidence to manage deviations in midwifery and neonatal care effectively.
In your final year, you'll focus on compassionate leadership, change management, and holistic care. These advanced skills will enhance your autonomy as a practitioner and prepare you for midwifery registration.
Compassionate Leadership, Excellence, and Change Management
Critically evaluate and lead midwifery services, initiating and managing change to enhance practice and drive service improvements.
The Role of the Midwife in Providing Holistic Care
Develop skills to assess and deliver inclusive care, addressing the bio-psycho-social and spiritual needs of childbearing individuals.
Midwifery Care for Individuals with Additional Needs
Gain knowledge to assess and manage physical and psychological conditions during childbirth, working with multidisciplinary teams for optimal care.
Assessing and Managing Care in Rapidly Changing Situations
Learn to manage acute health deteriorations in childbearing individuals, enhancing your skills for effective team-based care.
Becoming an Autonomous Practitioner
Combine your knowledge and skills to confidently practise as an independent midwife throughout the childbirth continuum.
Course Highlights
How you’ll learn
Your Midwifery training combines study days, block teaching weeks, and private study, using a blended learning approach with both synchronous and asynchronous elements. Theory and practice are evenly split, with assessments in both areas for each module. You'll be evaluated through various methods in clinical and academic settings, developing essential midwifery skills. You'll complete an electronic portfolio annually, along with written assessments, presentations, and a practice improvement project.
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Teaching staff
At USW, you’ll learn from experienced academic staff, including senior lecturers, midwifery skills trainers, and associate lecturers who are actively working in clinical practice. This means you’ll benefit from real-world insights that go hand-in-hand with your academic learning. Our open-door policy creates a friendly, supportive environment where you can build close professional relationships, making you feel part of a family-like community. Plus, we bring in experts in fields like genetics and pharmacology to give you cutting-edge, hands-on knowledge that keeps your learning fresh and relevant.
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Placements
As part of your midwifery training, you’ll undertake clinical placements across several local health boards, each lasting multiple weeks. These placements may involve extended travel and shifts that include late nights, early mornings and weekends. You will be fully supported and supervised by registered practitioners and the wider multi-professional team, providing care for childbearing individuals in diverse settings. In your third year, you’ll also get to take a negotiated placement, either within the UK or abroad, to further develop your experience.
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Facilities
Our state-of-the-art Clinical Simulation Centre replicates an NHS environment, providing high-fidelity clinical facilities for midwifery students. You’ll work with advanced birthing and maternal simulators to experience various stages of pregnancy, from spontaneous vaginal births to operative procedures. The simulation suite even mimics real life home, community and hospital settings, enhancing your practical skills in a safe, controlled setting. We also use real actors for role play, giving you insight into the patient’s perspective. This immersive experience helps build confidence before you enter real-world placements.
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ENTRY REQUIREMENTS
Typical qualification requirements:
- A Level: BBB to exclude General Studies
- Welsh BACC: Grade B and BB at A Level to exclude General Studies
- BTEC: BTEC Extended Diploma Distinction Distinction Merit
- Access to HE: Must complete 60 credits overall with at least 45 at level 3 and 15 at Level 2. Of the 45 credits at level 3, you will need a minimum of 24 Distinctions, 18 Merits and 3 passes.
Application advice:
We strongly advise applicants to take advantage of the advice available online, from demonstrating you have the relevant qualifications or experience, tips on writing your personal statement to advice on preparing for interview, we have a wealth of support and guidance available to applicants to ensure you are able to demonstrate that you have what it takes and make your application the best it can be. Please read our application advice.
Additional requirements include:
- All applicants are required to attend an interview. For further support on preparing for interview and what to expect at interview, please read our application advice.
- One satisfactory reference from someone who is able to comment on your attitude and approach to learning in a professional or academic sense.
- An Enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check on the Child & Adult Workforce and Child & Adult Barring List and subscription to the DBS Update Service is required. (Overseas equivalent required for non-uk applicants).
- A satisfactory medical will be required once an offer has been made. We will contact you closer to your start date with details of how to obtain these.
- The University normally requires a minimum 5 GCSEs including Mathematics/Numeracy and English at Grade C or Grade 4 or above, or their equivalent, but consideration is given to individual circumstances.
- Equivalent qualifications considered are Essential Skills Level Two in Communication and Application of Number, or Functional Skills Level Two in English and Mathematics. (Must have been achieved since 2016)
Closed for International applicants
Unfortunately, this course is not currently open to international applicants, please visit our course pages where you can find an alternative course choice.
Contextual offers
We may make you a lower offer based on a range of factors, including your background (where you live and the school or college that you attended, for example), your experiences and individual circumstances (as a care leaver, for example). This is referred to as a contextual offer, and we receive data from UCAS to support us in making these decisions.
USW prides itself on its student experience and we support our students to achieve their goals and become a successful graduate. This approach helps us to support students who have the potential to succeed and who may have faced barriers that make it more difficult to access university.
We're here to help
Whether you a have a question about your course, fees and funding, the application process or anything else, there are plenty of ways you can get in touch, and we'd love to talk to you. You can contact our friendly admissions team by phone, email or chat to us online.
Fees and Funding
£9,535
per year*£9,535
per year*£16,200
per year*Additional Costs
As a student of USW, you’ll have access to lots of free resources to support your study and learning, such as textbooks, publications, online journals, laptops, and plenty of remote-access resources. Whilst in most cases these resources are more than sufficient in supporting you with completing your course, additional costs, both obligatory and optional, may be required or requested for the likes of travel, memberships, experience days, stationery, printing, or equipment.
50% of the course takes place on placement. During placement, students may incur costs associated with travel. Travel expenses are available for distances greater than that from home to University. Uniforms are provided, however additional attire such as appropriate shoes that comply with NHS Wales Uniform Policy are expected.
Cost: Approx £30
Students will be expected to pay for a DBS or certificate of good behaviour from their home country. The DBS fee includes £49.50 for the enhanced DBS certificate, the Post Office Administration fee and the online administration fee.
Cost: £64.74
There is a wide variety of physical and e-books available via the library. Students may choose to purchase some textbooks.
Cost: Variable
University Quality Assurance
At USW, we regularly review our courses in response to changing patterns of employment and skills demand to ensure we offer learning designed to reflect today’s student needs and tomorrow’s employer demands.
If during a review process course content is significantly changed, we’ll write to inform you and talk you through the changes for the coming year. But whatever the outcome, we aim to equip our students with the skillset and the mindset to succeed whatever tomorrow may bring. Your future, future-proofed.
Life at USW
Halls are a big part of your student experience and there’s accommodation at all three of our locations. If you don’t want to live near the campus, there are great transport links to keep you connected.
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How to apply
All applications for full-time undergraduate courses or foundation degrees should be made via UCAS. Take the next step: Apply through UCAS. You can apply to us directly for all part-time undergraduate courses, if you’re seeking advanced entry or you’re an international student. To apply directly, please choose the application form below for your preferred start date and mode of study (full-time or part-time.)
Advanced entry
If you already have a relevant qualification or experience related to the course you're applying for, you may be eligible to start at a later stage of the course. For example, students from partner colleges can ‘top up’ their qualifications to a degree by joining us in Year Two or Year Three of a course. This process is known as ‘advanced entry’, you can apply directly to the University for 'advanced entry' using the application forms provided above.
International admissions
International applicants can apply to us directly. If the University has an in-country team in your region, your application will be assigned to them for assistance.
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