Hannah Kelly
I loved the hands-on nature of the degree, both in the practice labs & the clinical environment.
I grew up within Sydney’s Inner-West in Enmore, very close to the vibrant culture of Newtown, with my parents and brother. I was very active in my childhood (something I wish I was now!) playing a range of different sports at school, and played for the selective UNSW Football Club for a number of years in the super and premier leagues. Many many thanks to my parents for being my brother and I’s taxi driver to get us to and from all of our sporting commitments!
I didn’t particularly want to complete a nursing degree in my journey to becoming a Registered Midwife (which I knew would always be my goal). Therefore, the Bachelor of Midwifery provided me the opportunity to jump straight into midwifery after I finished high school and gain the education required to become a midwife within 3 years – teaching me to provide safe and effective care, with a mindset that values providing care that is woman centred.
I am passionate about providing woman-centred quality midwifery care. I particularly would love to work within a Midwifery Group Practice model of care that would allow me to provide continuity of care to women. This passion has grown out of the continuity of care experiences that are a part of our degree here at UTS, whereby we follow a minimum of 10 women through their pregnancy, labour, birth and postnatal period.
I chose to study at UTS because it was one of the two universities in Sydney that offer the Bachelor of Midwifery and has been recognised as one of the top universities to study midwifery in Australia. In addition to this, I loved the highly hands-on nature of the degree, both in the practice labs at UTS as well as in a clinical environment.
The most rewarding aspect of this course has been within our clinical placement blocks, where I have worked alongside midwives and feeling like I have been able to have a (albeit small) positive influence on a woman’s pregnancy/birthing/postnatal experience.
Over the course of this degree I believe I have become a far more confident individual. I struggled initially with the nervousness that came with having to build rapport with women who had never met me.
"Like all things, the more you practice and throw yourself in situations where you have to develop these skills, I have done just that. I now have no problem providing education, building rapport and attempting to create a safe, calm space within which I hope women I am caring for as a student midwife feel comfortable to share."
I hope to develop my skills as a midwife once registered over a couple years and then hopefully move into continuity of care based models of care, whether this be within a midwifery group practice or birth centre. I would also love to work overseas in the future and I have done some preliminary research about new graduate positions in New Zealand – I think this would be a wonderful time when I have so much support as a new graduate midwife to go and have this experience and push myself out of my comfort zone.
I would advise future students to grab every and any opportunity you can to develop your skills, whether this be within midwifery or your chosen field. These experiences will not only develop your abilities as a student midwife but will also help inform you of what sort of midwife you would like to be, what model of care you would like to work within and what matters most to you when developing your practice.
Be organised, start assessments early and plan your weeks/months/semesters because in a degree like this when you are on call and can be called at any moment, you don’t want to have left assessments to the last moment to complete.
