Written by Rachel Lorizio, 3rd year Bachelor of Midwifery student at UTS
For many of my high school years I had talked about becoming a midwife and what a valuable role I would play as a midwife in an ever-reproducing population. I was proud to dictate that a midwife is a health professional that gets to help women during pregnancy, childbirth and the early parenting period. I had always loved babies and pregnant women fascinated me. I also had a great interest in the human body, particularly the reproductive system and how our bodies were able to conceive, nurture growth within it, give birth and then provide everything a newborn needs to flourish. All my friends were jealous that I was so sure of what I wanted to be and what an amazing job I would have! They secretly thought it would be so great to have a friend with all the information they needed fortheir pregnancies and births to come.
However, as a young seventeen year old, Ibegan to research and think more critically about the career – would it provide
job opportunities? If I didn’t like it how could I change courses without
starting from scratch? Should I just do nursing to be safe? And most
importantly, would I even get the ATAR to get into the course?!
It was in the next month that I decided to
visit the UTS campus to really get these questions answered. I spoke to one of
the lovely students who was studying Midwifery at the time who gave me the best
advice to date:
“Choose the degree and career you will enjoy because if you love
it you’ll be great at it.”
So here I am, a third year studying a Bachelor of Midwifery and loving it.
But, why do you love studying Midwifery at UTS, I hear you ask?
Here’s a snapshot of why:
1. The UTS city campus facilities
are like no other – the labs set up for uni classes mimic the spaces we as midwives
will work in every day. I have loved working in role play situations with real
needles, manikins that give birth and act like real patients.
2. Clinical Placement – from your first
semester of your first year you get to spend time in Sydney hospitals learning from
industry leaders and individuals that are fantastic at their jobs. You get to
put all the skills and knowledge gained at university into practice and get a
bigger picture of how hospitals run and the hierarchy you belong to. While at
times daunting, this has provided me with so much experience and confidence in
my abilities as a midwife. I will be
working full time next year at 21 and I don’t think I would be nearly as
prepared without this time on the wards.
3. Our classes are Midwifery exclusive
– the small cohorts mean you get to know your classmates really, really well.
Not only is this great for group work and assisting each other with assessments
but also provides the perfect networking opportunities for you to develop a
support system for those days where you just need to talk to people who get
what you’re talking about and going through.
4. Lecturers and guest speakers
are at the forefront of this industry – the academics in the Health
Faculty not only have many years of experience behind them but are well known
in the community for the research papers and textbooks they have written, their
involvement in midwifery related associations and their midwifery based
volunteer work.
Studying Midwifery at UTS has taught me
more than the skills I need to work as an efficient Midwife, but has taught me
life skills I can use in every aspect of daily living. I have grown in
confidence with both my skills and as a person. I have loved being able to
assist women of all walks of life in their journeys to motherhood and cannot
wait to be doing this every day of my life!
Inside | Out 