Knowing Yourself: Skills, Experience, and What You Bring to Midwifery
With Emma and Ethan, Academic Skills Specialist
Key Takeaways
- Because understanding your own strengths and gaps helps you study more effectively and present yourself more authentically to universities.
- It's the foundation of a strong application.
- We split them into transferable skills — things like communication, empathy, teamwork — and subject knowledge.
- A midwifery applicant needs both.
- Parenting, caring for family members, customer-facing work, volunteering — these build communication, resilience, and emotional intelligence.
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Full Transcript
Emma: Welcome to Knowing Yourself: Skills, Experience, and What You Bring to Midwifery. I'm Emma, and with me is Ethan, our Academic Skills Specialist. Ethan, why does self-awareness matter so early in a student's journey?
Ethan: Because understanding your own strengths and gaps helps you study more effectively and present yourself more authentically to universities. It's the foundation of a strong application.
Emma: When we talk about skills in this context, what are we actually looking at?
Ethan: We split them into transferable skills — things like communication, empathy, teamwork — and subject knowledge. Both are valuable. A midwifery applicant needs both.
Emma: What kinds of life experiences tend to be relevant for aspiring midwives, even if they seem unrelated to healthcare?
How does knowing yourself: skills, experience, and what you bring to midwifery work in a healthcare context?
Ethan: Parenting, caring for family members, customer-facing work, volunteering — these build communication, resilience, and emotional intelligence. Universities recognise that these experiences shape excellent midwives.
Emma: How should students go about actually auditing their skills? Where do they start?
Ethan: A simple skills audit — listing what you can do, where you've demonstrated it, and where the gaps are. Then map those gaps to what a midwifery student needs and start building a plan.
Emma: Some students worry their experience isn't good enough or relevant enough. What would you say to them?
Ethan: Don't undersell yourself. Almost every life experience develops something useful. The key is being able to reflect on it — what did you learn, and how does that make you a better future midwife?
What are the different types of knowing yourself: skills, experience, and what you bring to midwifery?
Emma: Reflection seems to come up a lot in nursing and midwifery training. Why is it so central?
Ethan: Because midwifery is a reflective profession. You constantly evaluate what went well, what you'd do differently, and how to improve care. Starting to reflect now is genuinely preparing you for professional practice.
Emma: And this all feeds into the personal statement, doesn't it?
Ethan: Directly. Your personal statement is where you demonstrate self-awareness, relevant experience, and genuine motivation. If you've already done a skills audit, you have much richer material to draw on.
Emma: Final thought, Ethan — for someone who feels they don't have much to bring yet, what's the most practical first step?
What should learners understand about knowing yourself: skills, experience, and what you bring to midwifery?
Ethan: Spend time in a maternity environment if at all possible. Even shadowing for a day changes your perspective and gives you something real and specific to write about and reflect on.