Overview
What is a Midwife and Midwifery?
The term ‘midwife’ means ‘with woman’. As a midwife, you will be helping women and their families at one of the most crucial times of their lives, supporting the woman during pregnancy, childbirth and the post-natal period. Midwives play a vital role in promoting and maintaining health, facilitating normal childbirth and helping women make informed choices about their care. The midwife is the key professional providing continuity of care and promoting choice and control to women in pregnancy and birth, and to women and their babies following birth. The core concepts of the midwifery profession are of:
- Normality: Childbirth is viewed as a normal event in the life cycle, a normal healthy event.
- Woman-centred: The focus of midwifery practice is pregnant women and their families and delivering care in woman-centred maternity services.
- Respect: Midwifery care is delivered in a manner that respects the uniqueness and dignity of each person, regardless of culture or religion.
- Partnership: Partnerships between the woman and the midwife is fundamental to midwifery practice. It is based on mutual trust, support and collaboration, which facilitates informed choice and decision-making and the empowerment of both the woman and the midwife.
- Client first: Decisions about an individual midwife’s scope of practice should always be made with the woman’s and her family’s best interests foremost and in the interest of promoting and maintaining best quality maternity services for women and their families.
- Evidence based: Midwifery practice is based on the best available evidence.
- Advocacy: Midwifery practice involves advocacy for the individual woman and her family.
Midwifery: The course for you?
Midwives often describe their job as ‘privileged’. The role they have in preparing women for the birth of new life makes them a vital presence during all stages of pregnancy, labour and the early postnatal period.
If you want a rewarding and respected career with great employment and travel opportunities, then the professional course in midwifery could be for you.
Midwifery at Trinity
The School of Nursing and Midwifery at Trinity has a world-renowned reputation and courses are taught by academics at the top of their profession. The School is ranked first in the Republic of Ireland, 4th in Europe, and 20th worldwide in the latest QS World University Rankings by Subject 2025. You will have the opportunity to meet and mix with students from Ireland and abroad and form cohesive bonds throughout your time with us.
We also offer opportunities to study abroad and have a large suite of postgraduate courses available to our graduates to facilitate further study needs.
Graduate skills and career opportunities
On completion of this course, the student will be eligible to apply to register with the Midwives Division of the Register of Nurses and Midwives maintained by the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland (NMBI). The course offers an excellent foundation for career advancement in midwifery and further health-related studies. It facilitates learning across wide and varied experiences and promotes flexibility for employment within and outside the health services.
There are QQI/FET routes available for this course. Please see www.cao.ie for details.
Your degree and what you’ll study
This four-year course will cover such areas as: midwifery practice - knowledge and skills; communication and interpersonal skills; professional, personal, ethical and legal issues; biological sciences; psychology; pharmacology and non-pharmacological approaches; social theory for midwifery practice; research; health promotion; and the maternal and social care services in Ireland.
You will begin your first midwifery clinical placement in October of the first year of the course. All four years of the programme combine learning in university and clinical midwifery practice in the maternity hospitals. The first three years of the programme will follow an academic year structure with the usual academic holidays. The final year will include a 36-week period of internship in midwifery practice.
The majority of the theoretical component of the course will be taught in the Trinity School of Nursing and Midwifery building, which is located on D’Olier Street, minutes from the main campus. Classes are also held on other sites including the main Trinity College and in the Trinity Centre for Health Sciences in St. James’s Hospital. Teaching methods include lectures, small-group teaching, tutorials and practice classes.
The course is offered in partnership with two linked maternity care providers: The Coombe Hospital and The Rotunda Hospital. Each midwifery student will be allocated all of their midwifery clinical placements throughout the four years at one of these maternity hospitals. Some placements may also occur in other sites including the Midlands Regional Hospital, Portlaoise.
You will be required to complete clinical placements each year, which will consist of 30-35 hours (approximately) supernumerary practice per week in a practice setting. Midwifery students will also undertake other clinical placements, for example, community midwifery, mental health, high dependency care and care of the critically ill woman and neonatal unit.
Assessment of learning in midwifery practice is an important component of the course and will take place throughout the course.
Click here for further information on modules/subjects.
Study abroad
The Erasmus programme enables students to study at another European university as part of their university degree. This is an exciting opportunity for students to experience a core clinical placement in another European Union healthcare system for a maximum period of eight weeks duration. Erasmus exchange takes place in semester two of second year and semester one of third year. Current Erasmus partners include University of Malta; University College of Northern (UCN) Denmark Aalborg, Denmark; Maastricht University Netherlands
There are also summer international opportunities students can apply for such as volunteering in Africa. We currently offer a Scholarship for a short summer programme in the United States and Hong Kong. Collaborative online international learning opportunities are also provided for our high achieving nursing and midwifery students.
