The Mid­wifery Upskilling (MIDUS) Course was devel­oped in con­sul­ta­tion with remote area mid­wives and doc­tors, fol­low­ing an iden­ti­fied need for a short course that specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed mid­wives and obstet­ric trained GPs work­ing in a remote or iso­lat­ed setting.

The MIDUS Course aims to pro­vide mid­wives and doc­tors in remote, iso­lat­ed and/​or rur­al set­tings with the skills and knowl­edge to offer cul­tur­al­ly safe and evi­dence-based mater­ni­ty care across the child­birth con­tin­u­um. It pro­vides an overview of cur­rent evi­dence informed best prac­tice in ante­na­tal, intra­partum and post­na­tal care, all from the per­spec­tive of evi­dence informed, high qual­i­ty care, con­tex­tu­alised to the rur­al and remote setting. 

Key strengths of CRANAplus’ MIDUS Course

• It is a very inter­ac­tive with facil­i­tat­ed small group, stu­dent led learn­ing, with four case study rota­tions and four skill sta­tion rota­tions which cov­er PPH, NNR, Breech and Shoul­der Dystocia.
• There is very lit­tle didac­tic learn­ing e.g. lec­tures. Instead, we aim to tap into and build on an exist­ing knowl­edge base and estab­lished mid­wifery scope of prac­tice, and encour­age course par­tic­i­pants to bring their own con­text, knowl­edge and skills to the table for dis­cus­sion and shared learning.
• It includes updates on nor­mal preg­nan­cy, birth and post­na­tal care, as this is often ​‘bread and but­ter’ for the remote mid­wife, and ensures that if nor­mal para­me­ters are well under­stood, then vari­a­tions can be quick­ly iden­ti­fied and man­aged, and/​or esca­lat­ed for consultation/​referral/​retrieval as required. Most oth­er cours­es focus on mater­ni­ty emer­gen­cies, which are crit­i­cal, but only part of a mid­wifes’ scope of prac­tice, and in par­tic­u­lar for the rur­al and remote mid­wife who may work in iso­la­tion, nei­ther have access to updates and edu­ca­tion in their remote set­ting, and often work with­out a great deal of col­le­gial sup­port on a reg­u­lar basis.
  
• All con­tent is con­tex­tu­alised to the rur­al and remote mater­ni­ty care provider. As we know, there is no point to sug­gest a path­way, or emer­gency response, a piece of equip­ment, which is just not avail­able in a small, low-resourced setting.
• It is the only course specif­i­cal­ly designed for the rur­al and remote mater­ni­ty ser­vice provider and adds the rur­al and remote con­text to the con­tent of cur­rent, evi­dence informed prac­tice. We close­ly ref­er­ence the CARPA Women’s Busi­ness Man­u­al, The Pri­ma­ry Clin­i­cal Care Man­u­al, along with the NSQHS Stan­dards, and those of oth­er rel­e­vant pro­fes­sion­al bod­ies, and refer close­ly to the ACM Nation­al Mid­wifery Guide­lines for Con­sul­ta­tion and Refer­ral, to guide and sup­port the practitioner.

There are, of course, oth­er excel­lent cours­es avail­able for mid­wives by oth­er providers. How­ev­er, these are most­ly run in the big city cen­tres, are con­duct­ed in situ with dis­crete teams, cov­er most­ly emer­gency man­age­ment, and are not con­tex­tu­alised to the rur­al and remote setting.

The CRANAplus MIDUS Course is offered across the coun­try, approx­i­mate­ly five times per year, and runs over almost three days, from 3pm on Day 1, then two very full days on Days 2 & 3. 

There are pre-course and on course assess­ments which cov­er the­o­ry, and on course prac­ti­cal assess- ments, which assist the course par­tic­i­pant to focus and direct their learn­ing into key areas and enable them to feel con­fi­dent that they are updat­ed in both the­o­ret­i­cal and clin­i­cal knowledge.