What I imagine my career as a midwife will be like

Louisa is a student midwife based in London. In this video she talks about what she hopes happens with her future, and she talks about her absolute dream of where she wants midwifery to take her.

Hey y’all, welcome back to my channel Being Louisa!

So today's video is gonna be what I imagine my career as a midwife to be like and it's also gonna be sponsored by Nurses.co.uk.

They are an online website where you can look up all things nursing, from jobs to their blog posts where they tell you how to's and give you advice, they let you know what it's like to be a nurse and what it’s like being a student nurse.

Some people may think ‘well, you’re a student midwife, why are you talking about this?’.

Well come on guys, as I always say, I think I said it's like a gajillion times now, skills are transferable.

More skills are transferable! I use my skill of working in a children's shoe shop from the age of 15 to 18 as something as a great quality on my resume to get into midwifery.

All skills are transferable and will help in midwifery jobs!

They also do have a small section about midwifery which is going to expand with us!

So yeah, let’s start this video. What do I imagine my career as a midwife to be? Hmm… Let's do this chronologically and realistic to my absolute dream.

To start with...

I actually qualify next year.

In the year 2020 I qualify so technically it's a year and nine months away but still it's next year.

It feels so weird to say that now that it’s the new year!

I qualify next year, I graduate the after because that's just how my uni does it.

Lord willing, I'll be working probably the November of next year.

So here in London most hospitals, most trusts have a preceptorship year, that's usually band five pay grade in the NHS however some hospitals do pay band six pay grade in NHS.

You really want to look at the preceptorships and what they offer and what they expect you to know, what skills they expect you to have, to make sure it's right one for you.

So I expect I'll be doing my preceptorship here, definitely here.

I don't know what hospital yet because I just don't know, it's a lot of pressure and I'm just still trying to, like, figure out my life!

I probably will be staying in London even though I have said a bunch of times in my other videos I'm not the biggest fan of London, but it's just because I want to make as much money as quickly as possible so I can save as much as possible, so that I can move countries and also volunteer abroad.

So yeah, I have a plan.

So I’m expecting to have a hospital midwife job for the first year.

There's not a lot of trusts that will let you be a community Midwife.

So I’ll be a hospital midwife for about a year, it depends on like my preceptorship and where I'm at and what they allow and then I will hopefully, God willing if I stay here for two years after qualify, I will then hopefully transfer over onto community team or onto a continuity team.

They're all being established now and a lot of trusts around London because of the Better Births Report the continuity teams are being established.

I remember last year when I went to the maternity and midwifery festival they were talking about how they're all getting established in different boroughs or different areas, regions and trusts.

So they’re going to be established around London so that's really cool, or I'd be on a home birth team.

I would love to be on a home birth team, I probably might not get a home birth team because that might be like a lot of pressure but like that's the same thing as continuity.

So the continuity teams, I think, I believe how they work is that they are basically like community teams but they also do have some shifts on the ward so that might be a nice way to ease into being a community Midwife - who knows!

So that's kind of like my ideal for my second year, and like continuing on, that's like my realistic ideal anyway. That's kind of that plan!

What I dream of for my future…

I hope to sometime in the future, probably the following year but it just depends on finances and God, but I plan to volunteer abroad.

I've always wanted to volunteer broad, I mean from the youngest of age my desires always been to give back. I just I have never done it yet so I have in small ways but not in a big way.

So I dream of doing it, that just hasn't happened yet but it will happen because that's just in my heart and it's something I've always want to do but I've always wanted to go around the world and learn new cultures, and that's just a thing about me.

I'd love to learn things - I like different ways to do things so I really do want to volunteer abroad somewhere or work abroad for a bit somewhere, that'd be amazing!

And then - there's so many levels to how I think my career is gonna go - lastly the one that has always been like a dream, like something that I probably won't get to but now that I'm getting closer and closer I'm actually getting scared...

I don't know if any of you guys understand what I mean like I don’t know if you guys have felt that but when you like try and you fail and you try and you fail you try and you fail so you think that when you try next time it's not gonna happen, but then actually does happen and you get closer and closer to like that end goal, that end dream, you just get scared!

I don't know how to explain this but I have always had a dream of moving abroad and living abroad somewhere, immigrating there and relocating to a different country.

I have a country mind I'm not gonna say it but lord knows and everyone around me does.

I've always wanted to live in this place, it depends on when I get into the bridging course which is like a conversion course, so that my degree actually is valid there and so that like my qualification as a midwife is valid there, so it depends on when I get into that.

Midwifery is different there, well it's like similar but also different, depends on where you go in the country but what I'm thinking, what I'm leaning towards doing, I'm not quite sure I have no idea where I want to go but where I'm leaning towards it's very much how I've always envisioned and imagined midwifery to be.

It's very much you're not based and possibly based out of a hospital but you do have hospital privileges, and then you are basically running your own practice and you're working in a small team.

It's very autonomous like it's how a midwifery is set to be here, but it's autonomous here in a different way to how its autonomous there.

So it's really cool like you’ll be working in a smaller team and you'll be following these women from booking up until six weeks postnatal I believe, it is something like that so it's like a really long period.

You're following that same woman the whole entire way through and gonna have a whole bunch of women like that, it's basically case loading and that's kind of always been my dream, and I know a lot of people are a bit iffy about it because of being on call and people like, if you have a family it's really hard.

Well when the Lord blesses me with the man he best know that these women are important - just kidding!

But like you know I mean like it's just something that you just have to work out with your other half and or with your children and if you're single parent.

It’s like you something you work out and they’ve got to understand and you've got to understand, like there is a give-and-take.

It's a lot but it's something I'm super excited about, like continuity is just something I talk about quite a bit on these videos and it's something that I absolutely would just drive for.

If I can have anything, even if I don't end up moving to the country I want to move to and into like little cute small town like I wanted to, even if I stay here in England, that's what I want.

That's how I want my career to be, I want it to be continuity based I want to be able to be like I know this woman, like I mean I want her to have a look on her face and me be like, I know exactly what she needs or what she wants, or when she's in labor or even anytime.

I want to be able to say I booked her, I was with her for all of her appointments even when - even times when she didn’t have an appointment sheet but she needed to talk to me, I was there I answered her phone call.

I want to be there when she's given birth - if I'm not there watching during the birth I just want to be able to see her afterwards.

But it’d be amazing if I can be there when she's giving birth because because you have such a good connection, we have such a good relationship that it's helpful.

I want to be that midwife!

The end goal, essentially, is to be a continuity midwife

So that's kind of how I see my future in a midwife job, my goal is continuity.

I would be a case loading Midwife or just a regular Midwife in the country I want to move to.

I just want to be able to say I know this woman; I know this woman throughout her whole pregnancy, when she's giving birth and after she's given birth and I want her to be able to be like, when she comes back what would her subsequent pregnancy I want her to be like, ‘I would like Louisa because she was amazing my first pregnancy’.

I want to be very much like that, I want to be very natural with the way I do things and kind of going with woman's body, learning acupuncture learning aromatherapy, learning every birthing.

Those are the things that I really wanted to do because it just all go into my portfolio of me and my portfolio of being a midwife.

Yeah I hope you guys have enjoyed this video! I'm gonna challenge you - how do you guys see your future career to be like?

Let me know in the comments below because they'll be awesome and interesting to see.

I hope you guys enjoyed this video and until next time, keep on being you!

If you like this video give it a thumbs up, comment down below any questions or suggestions and don't forget to subscribe to get weekly updates.

Bye!

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