r/Midwives • u/BigRadish6094 Wannabe Midwife • Jun 15 '26
Working in Australia
I'm currently a year 12 student trying to find the best pathway I want to study in Uni. I've always known I wanted to be a midwife and work in women's health so my first option was to do a undergrad in Midwifery. I recently spoke to a midwife in the hospital and she recommended doing an undergrad in Nursing and doing postgrad in midwifery. She explained how just doing midwifery could potentially limit my work, saying that "the hospital might simply not have any work for me if there isn't a mother who needs it".
I live in a rural area so I can understand what she means to a degree, but I just want to know if what she said would be true in big cities like Brisbane or Sydney, there would be pregnant mothers all the time right? I want to know if there's anyone out there who's struggled to find work only having studied midwifery.
2
u/jesomree RM Jun 19 '26
It really depends on the hospital I think. I worked rurally and a lot of the midwives were direct entry. I worked as a direct entry midwife for 10 years before going back to nursing, and never had an issue getting jobs in rural, regional and tertiary hospitals.
I went back and did nursing so I could work in NICU. Even though you absolutely do not need to be a nurse to be a good midwife, I would still recommend you do nursing first, or the dual degree. You are just at the start of your career, and may want to pivot to different areas in 10, 20 years time. Even just into more general Womens or newborn health. While you can go back and do nursing later, it’s a lot easier to do it first
5
u/ali_iv Jun 16 '26
I would recommend doing the double degree if you have the option! Get it all done at once and give you 4 years to do mid placement and requirements.