The history of midwifery education in the Maltese Islands

Abstract

The Faculty of Medicine & Surgery of the University of Malta Medical School is currently undertaking the exercise of updating its curriculum structure with the aim of streamlining the teaching programme and ensuring that undergraduate medical education is as comprehensive as possible. This exercise has obviously required the contribution of the Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology which has striven to build on the experiences of the past to re-structure its curriculum and integrate this whenever possible with other specialities. The new curriculum sets out to provide the student with a solid foundation of knowledge and skills to address these women-specific health care needs, with an emphasis on reproductive lifecycle needs. The principles of reproductive health care learned in the Study Units should be integral in whatever area of medicine the individual will ultimately practice. The reproductive medicine study units should ensure that the students attain a number of essential core learning objectives and core clinical skills and competences. The desiderata in required learning objectives and competences have obviously changed throughout the decades with the changing patterns of health care being offered in modern society. The development of specialist care has ensured that areas considered core topics in previous decades have become the domain of specialist care, thus reducing the demands on undergraduate training of both medical physicians and midwives