Nurturing midwives to ‘walk with women’

Hau Wai-lei
Principal of School of Midwifery
Prince of Wales Hospital

Established in 1987, Prince of Wales Hospital’s School of Midwifery is the only midwifery school in Hong Kong nowadays and has trained over 1,500 midwives in the last three decades. School Principal Hau Wai-lei has been teaching there for 27 years where she has devoted a significant part of her life to training midwives. Also as the Chairman of Midwives Council of Hong Kong, she actively promotes professionalism of midwifery at local and international levels.

Hongkongers tend to confuse the roles of registered nurses and midwives, but the latter is in fact seen as a highly-recognised profession in western countries. She says, “The word midwife means ‘with women’ who have to walk with the pregnant women through the pregnancy journey and the provision of one-stop care and full support throughout pregnancy, childbirth and post-partum period. It is easy to pass on the knowledge to the new generations, but the key task lies in the nurture of students’ attitudes so that they can fulfil the mission of midwives – to offer whole-hearted care to pregnant women and give them a positive experience in childbirth.”

In retrospect, the school went through a major setback in the year 2000, when low birth rate led to a reduction in student intake of midwife programmes, thereby causing successive closure of midwife training schools. The school at Prince of Wales Hospital is the only one survived. “In the past, there were two classes of 40 students every year, but the number of students dropped to as low as only 11 students during those tough years.” Despite the risk of shut down, she saw opportunities amid risks and carried out reforms with her colleagues to extend the 12-month programme to 18 months. With the lengthened time span and broadened curriculum, the principal sought to strengthen students’ ability to adapt to different situations and make decisions while being better aligned with similar programmes overseas.

To enhance the quality of midwives, she introduced the ‘sandwich’ teaching model in October 2014, where theoretical classes and clinical attachment are separated. In the past, students might have to attend classes on one day and work in the ward on the very next day, a practice that could contribute to slow learning progress due to physical exhaustion. The change of teaching model allows students to focus on studies during the two to four weeks of intensive classes. This new practice may increase the workload of the teaching staff and administration team of obstetrics department, but it is worth the effort when students can benefit from the better learning conditions.