A day in the life of... a third-year student midwife

A day in the life of third-year student midwife Camella Main.

Midwives magazine: Issue 5 :: 2011

Name: Camella Main
Occupation:Third-year student midwife
Lives: London

Based at King’s College London, I am one of 23,000 students from more than 140 countries. The integrated midwifery curriculum means that we are in university and clinical placement every week. My training has been based at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, which caters for around 7000 births per year. The trust serves the diverse population of Lambeth and Southwark. It also provides care to women living outside of London who have high-risk pregnancies (due to maternal conditions or fetal anomalies) and require the expertise of our specialist midwives, obstetricians, neonatal team and fetal medicine unit. The following account describes a day with a community caseload-holding team.

A typical day

8.00am I meet my mentor on the hospital birth centre to take over from another team member who was on-call overnight. The baby was born two hours ago so we give breastfeeding support and complete the initial examination.

9.30 We transfer the woman and her family to the postnatal ward, settle them in and hand over her care.

9.45 We get a call from a woman who has not felt her baby move for six hours so we arrange to meet her on the day assessment unit for monitoring. I have to admit that I am always slightly anxious when starting the monitoring just in case I cannot find a heartbeat. However, thankfully the cardiotocography trace is normal, so we reassure and discharge the woman.

10.45 I attend a student reflection session facilitated by a supervisor of midwives while my mentor interviews a potential team member. We take turns to describe a recent situation we have encountered before we have a round-table discussion about what happened. My case (involving a vaginal breech birth) triggers an interesting debate.

11.45 While my mentor completes her paperwork, I go to Waterloo campus to carry out a campus tour – as a student ambassador, I have to show prospective midwifery students around and tell them about the course.

1.00pm My mentor and I attend the weekly perinatal mortality meeting, which involves the multidisciplinary team going through interesting cases and discussing the appropriateness of care given.

2.00 We get a call from a woman who reports she has just started contracting. The team carries out home assessments in labour to avoid unnecessary admission in the latent phase so we head to her home. I always think community midwives should have sirens but they don’t, so we plod along in the traffic.

2.30 On arrival, we assess the multiparous woman who appears to be in advanced labour and contracting.

3.10 The woman decides that she would like to stay at home to give birth. My mentor informs a second midwife and we set up the equipment.

3.15 A healthy baby boy is brought into the world. I help the father to support his partner in delivering her baby and initiate immediate skin-to-skin contact. As always, I find myself welling up as the whole family sob in relief and joy at the resounding cry of a new life.

5.45 Leaving the joyful mother in bed breastfeeding her beautiful son, my mentor and I head to a nearby coffee shop to have a bite to eat, sign off some skills and complete my time sheet.

6.30 I attend an evening seminar at university by a visiting professor on nutrition in pregnancy before heading home. I’m exhausted, but full of enthusiasm to become a midwife.