Midwifery Education Development Pathway (MPath)

The ICM Standards for Midwifery Education are an essential pillar of ICM’s efforts to strengthen midwifery worldwide by promoting high quality education programmes that prepare midwives who meet the ICM definition of a midwife.

This document contains advice to help midwifery educators meet the ICM Global Standards for Midwifery Education that pertain to practical/clinical experience.

This document serves as a companion to the ICM Standards for Midwifery Education, providing supplementary information and insights.

The essential competences for the practice of midwifery describe the minimum set of knowledge, skills and professional behaviours required by an individual to use the title of midwife as defined by the ICM.

This guide provides midwife educators with information on assessing the ICM Essential Competencies for Midwifery Practice. It contains an overview of competency-based assessment and examples of the most common assessments used in a midwifery curriculum.

This resource provides information on how to integrate the ICM Essential Competencies for Midwifery Practice (2024) into a midwifery education programme. It also reviews how to design learning activities and assessments for a competency-based curriculum.

The competency mapping tool enables faculty to align their Midwifery programmes, whether new or existing, with the Essential Competencies for Midwifery Practice.

This glossary provides definitions for the terminology used when building a curriculum, based on the standard ICM terminology.

This document provides an internationally recognised definition and scope of practice of a midwife.

This document provides a universal, description of the philosophy and model of midwifery care, without compromising local or regional characteristics of midwifery care.

Every profession needs a structure to support it, strengthen it and guide its development, that includes all the elements required before an occupation can be considered a profession.

This programme guide provides midwifery educators with an example of how to structure a direct-entry midwifery programme that meets the ICM Global Standards for Midwifery Education.

This guide is an overview of the key components of a post-nursing midwifery pre-service programme to help guide midwifery teachers and faculty to either develop a new credential or revise pre-existing pre-service programmes.

ICM asserts midwifery educators must align with ICM Global Standards and WHO Core Competencies. Essential qualifications include midwifery practice, formal teaching preparation, ongoing development, and advocacy.