Midwife assistant a good plan?

[toonsis]

Hi all!

Here's a bit of my background, I'm starting my ADN program in 2 weeks. I already have a bachelors degree, from 8 years ago. My main hurdle is a weak GPA, undergrad was a 2.9, which is not representative of my abilities at all.

I have no human medical experience yet. I have already stared orientation to volunteer at a hospital on a L&D floor, but in a patient services role, not in a medical capacity at this point.

My ideal goal would be in a part-time Master's degree in a CNM program right after graduation, while working as an RN. Please keep in mind, that I don't know how realistic all of this is yet, as I am new to my research.

I want to get experience to help get into a program, but mostly to solidify that yes this feels like home to me.

Do think it would be worth it to take a five day course during a school break to become a midwife assistant, and work part-time as one if I can handed all of it?

Any feedback or advice is certainly appreciated. Thank you :)

[AspiringNurseMW]

Hi. I am also starting my ADN program in 2 weeks as well with an end goal of becoming a midwife. Speaking from having experience as a doula I do not know how much value taking midwife assistant training will give you mainly because it is extremely difficult to practice as one while going to school. Do you have a homebirth/birth center midwife that would you would work or volunteer for once you complete the training? You would only really be able to attend maybe one birth during winter break and 2-4 during summer break if you are lucky. Remember that being used as a midwife assistant requires being on call for basically an indefinite amount of time, which is what basically making it impossible to do while going to school.

Of course, the exposure to it is a great, especially because it would be a nice contrast/balance to the medicalized view of birth we will most likely be exposed to during nursing school. So basically its a nice thing to have under your belt but it might not necessarily help in school or getting into Midwifery MSN program.

For me personally, Im going to be doing a RN to BSN program online once I graduate, hopefully while working, just to give me more options for Midwifery school (since some require a BSN to enter because they don't have a bridge program or some have a bridge program but do not award a BSN - like Frontier)

[queenanneslace, ADN, MSN, APRN, CNM]

Before I started nursing school, I took a midwife assistant course at The Farm in Tennessee. It was very good. It won't make much of a difference to you in your nursing studies. But if you are interested in midwifery and out-of-hospital birth, it will be good for your own knowledge and experience.

ANYTHING you can do to further your own desire for knowledge will be worthwhile. It will.

It will be very hard to work as a midwife assistant during nursing school. I did this - but I ended up having to leave in the middle of labors to get to a clinical - and sometimes I would take call between semesters. Sometimes I would be on call for a month and never get called to a birth. Being on call for an out-of-hospital midwifery practice is pretty much all-or-nothing. You can try to fit it into school and work schedules. But it creates a very fragmented reality for you!

Working with patients/clients in any role will help you. Are you a CNA? Have you applied to work in a hospital as a patient care assistant? Just being in the facility will help. Do what you can to be with patients, as well as to see experienced skilled nurses and providers with patients. Observing is such a wonderful learning process. And if you can get paid while you're observing, even better.

I'll say this: go after all the experiences you can. I remember having the same questions "Should I complete a doula training?" "Should I become a lactation counselor?" "Should I keep up my CNA certification?" I never got any solid answer - but if I could talk to myself 10-15 years ago I would say: "YES. Do it all! It will all be worth it!"