Introduction
Midwifery is defined as “skilled knowledgeable end compassionate care for child bearing women, new-borns, infants and families across the continuum from pre-pregnancy, pregnancy, birth, after birth and early weeks of life.
The evidence shows that midwifery plays a vital role and when provided by educated trained midwives, is associated with improved quality of care and rapid and sustained reduction in maternal and new-born morbidity and mortality.
Core characteristics of midwifery include optimizing normal biological, psychological, socio- cultural and environmental processes of reproduction and early life, timely prevention and management of complications, consultation with and referral to other services.
Being the first Nigerian institution to offer midwifery at the university level, our vision is to continually improve our status as first centre of excellence for midwifery education in Nigeria.
Rationale for the midwifery programme
The rationale for establishing the graduate programme in midwifery/child health nursing is to bridge the current and obvious lack of trained personnel with terminal qualification in midwifery in Nigeria and Africa in general.
The programme is designed to prepare graduates to assume a leadership role in midwifery by promoting high quality evidenced based clinical practice, education, health policy and research scholarship.
Aim/Objectives of the Midwifery Programme
The aim of the midwifery programme is to attain ground-breaking for university-based midwifery education in Nigeria. The objectives of the Midwifery programme is to prepare graduates who will be able to:
- Lead knowledge generation in midwifery education, practice and research.
- Demonstrate leadership to initiative and guide change in clinical practices.
- Use critical and reflective thinking skill to provide evidence base care
- Synthesize existing knowledge critically and generate new knowledge into the body of knowledge in midwifery and child’s care.
- Promote the health of local to global communities and safe environments through community responsive models of health.
Synthesize existing knowledge of environmental influences on mothers and infants in the communities and inform practice and policy making