Subject choices in year 11 & 12?? DD wants to be a midwife.

My DD wants to be a midwife, she is currently in year 10.
What are her best options for her year 11 and 12 courses to get into uni?
Can you become a midwife without uni? Tafe etc.. ?
Does she have to become an EN or RN before she can become a midwife?

We are in NSW.

As you can see I don't know much about this sort of stuff. It's changed a lot since I went to school and I only went to year 10.

She is going to speak to her teachers and careers advisor, but I thought maybe I could get some info from BB ladies who have been there, done that :)

Hi Hun

I'm in SA, but I think the rules are national? :dunno:

In SA, you have to be an RN and then do 2 years? study to be a middie. You can do the EN bit at TAFE (in SA) which gets you entry into some uni's for the RN bit. In most cases you will need year 12 to get a place in a Nursing course.

I would think that biology is a must as is maths and some sort of health studies (not sure of high school curriculum these days!) - the career adviser at the school wouldn't be worth their salt if they can't guide on THAT! :)

try looking at the myfuture dot edu dot au site and also the jobguide dot deewr dot gov dot au site and searching for midwife.

Good luck!

yeah id say health, biology i think some schools offer anatomy in yr 12 so id say that too :) HTH

Look up a few unis, they should have entrance requirements for the nursing/mid courses.

There are 2 ways of being a midwife, doing a specialised bachelor of midwifery or doing a registered nurse course and then a graduate course after. The first means, I think, she can only work as a midwife, the second means she can work anywhere in nursing or midwifery. Might make it easier to work overseas as well if she is interested in that.

DD has the same aim and is studying - biology, psychology, food tech, english...I think she was doing higher maths but dropped it to make sure her scores were as high as possible as it's hard to get in.

DD needs to see the careers guidance person at the school, they should put her on the right track.

To get into Nursing, you really dont need any individual subject as a pre requisite. Obviously you need to pass English, but that goes for any course with uni. Basically she is best to pick any TER subject that is going to give her the best result. I did english, maths and human biology and scored well with these subjects.

To be a registered nurse/registered midwife she does need to go to uni, to be an enrolled nurse she can go to TAFE. However you cant be a midwife as an enrolled nurse.
I believe some states were bringing in a registered midwife course so you didnt have to do the full nursing degree first. In WA you do 3 years bachelor of nursing and then 1 year post grad work, followed by 12 months post grad to complete the mid wife course (if you get accepted of course)

Personally, eventhough she thinks she wants to be a midwife, I would encourage her to do her full nursing degree and then qualify as a midwife. It just means that she has more flexibility with career choices down the track. I always wanted to do midwifery, but started nursing and fell in love with geriatric nursing and have now done it for 12 years.

I had a look and University of Technology Sydney offers a Bachelor of Midwifery degree, and apparently it's the only one in NSW. It's three years.

You have to have finished Year 12 and passed English. It's also recommended you pass a Science subject and a Maths subject (I'd suggest Biology for the Science subject).

What I think would be better though is doing a Bachelor of Nursing (same requirements) and if she still wants to be a Midwife, do a Masters of Midwifery, which you can do at a few other unis and is an extra year.

This is just what I reckon... highest maths she can manage, biology OR chemistry - either one will get her into the kind of scientific thinking required, and senior biology is very broad and not necessarily human oriented. Obviously English as well, again, highest she can manage.

Other than that, I'd recommend doing subjects she likes; it's the only time you really get to do this, and she'll probably do better at these ones, and get better marks at the end, if meeting the nursing cut-off is a concern.

And I also agree with others on the option of doing straight nursing first. Our student midwife said that 1 in 10 in her nursing/mid course have switched out to straight nursing. It does keep your options a lot more open.

I'd also recommend getting her out there and maybe doing some volunteer work in a related field, like for St Johns or similar. A few girls at school who wanted to get in to nursing did this (one's a midwife, one's a vet nurse, one's an engineer - ?!) and I think it's a great idea.

If you can get your hands on the uni guide (it's called the VTAC guide in VIC) which usually comes out at this time of year it will tell you the pre requesits for all the nursing courses available in your state and also the required TER. She should be able to pick one up at school and some Newsagents have them too.

Usually though the subjects she'll need are Maths, English and Science but it does depend on the Uni.

I believe in NSW the Uni guide is UAC, is available online as well as those places Tinks said. Her school library should also have a copy of both this years and last years to look at. She just looks up the course she is interested in and it will state any pre-requities. Back in the day it would also list any UAI you would need based on the popularity of the course from the previous years. Looks like this is now an ATAR? Some didnt have this requirement and you were accepted based on merit. There used to also be a principals early acceptance program, I dont know if that is still available but its worth looking into if it is. Thats how I got into uni the first time around :redface: Most Uni's offer other alternative entry pathways, its a good idea to check with the uni and have a squizz in the UAC book. Also if you live rural you used to get extra points to your UAI for living 'disadvantaged' and to encourage you into the uni life... It may have changed a bit since those days though...

Not sure when your open days for the Unis are but go to them and talk to the nursing area. they will be able to point her in the right direction. You can ring the Unis and talk to someone. Also her careers advisor should be able to help.
Does she know a exstudent from her school who is doing nursing that she could talk to?
A friend of DD2 is doing nursing and didn't do biology and had a really hard time when she had to do the subject at Uni.

When I applied for EN they prefer Human biology and maths of some sort.