New Midwife Training Centre Opens

Bournemouth University’s (BU) new state of the art Midwifery Training Facility will officially open on Monday 20 February at St Mary’s Community Health Campus, Portsmouth.

The redevelopment of the BU midwifery campus is part of an £18 million Portsmouth Primary Care Trust funded project to refurbish St Mary’s Hospital into St Mary’s Community Campus. The new facility boasts the latest training industry standard equipment, and high tech audio visual kit. The new facility enables students to train in a hospital environment, which replicates or uses the same equipment they will use on placement, and when they qualify as working midwives.
 
The Midwife Education Training Facility includes two 50 seat lecture theatres, both with high spec AV equipment, one with a moveable wall to separate it into two smaller rooms, a 16 seat PC lab, a three bed practice skills room with small skills store area, two  break out rooms that seat between 8 and 10 in each room, a  lounge/break out room, and two staff offices.
 
The Skills room contains a brand new birthing bed, costing over £7000, a birthing couch, a profiling bed and a brand new Resuscitaire costing about £8500. Cameras are fitted to the skills lab so that students can be filmed for training and assessment purposes, which they will be able to take away with them on their memory stick to review their own performance.
 
Professor Gail Thomas, Dean of Health and Social Care and Applied Sciences at BU, and herself a midwife, is delighted that these new facilities are available to support an excellent student experience at Portsmouth. 

She said: "We provide education for health professionals across much of the south of England and it is important that all of our students have the opportunity to learn in conducive environments, wherever they are based. The developments at Portsmouth will enhance the experience of our east-based student midwives, providing them with high quality skills laboratories, lecture and seminar rooms and general learning space. I am very pleased with the outcome of the hard work of the Trust, BU's Estates and the School's resources team and I'm sure the students would agree."