The Midwifery Master’s Course

The Midwifery Master’s Course

Course Characteristics

Japan has a rapidly declining birthrate, a rise in the age of mothers at childbirth, a lack of obstetricians, and a decrease in parturient facilities. Midwifes have been educated in one-year courses in Japan, but this training term is insufficient to address these societal issues.

Our two-year Master’s course curriculum is based on the ICM’s “Global Standards for Midwifery Education”. Our course graduates have advanced diagnostic skills, practical skills and maternity care competencies. They can collaborate with obstetricians and provide advanced perinatal care for high-risk pregnancies and labor puerperal.

Our graduates are partners in supporting the health and well-being of women and their families. Our midwifery course graduates have the following six essential competencies:

1) practical skills to develop midwifery processes for pregnant women, fetuses, and newborns
2) management skills to use the midwifery system to coordinate and conduct midwife activities
3) support skills to assist women with sexual and reproductive health issues throughout their lives
4) multidisciplinary collaboration skills to use social resources to solve individual and societal sexual and reproductive health problems
5) research skills to contribute to the development of midwifery and midwifery science
6) ethical decision-making skills

Course Curriculum

Students develop clinical reasoning skills in lectures and skills exercises and learn advanced midwifery diagnostic techniques using ultrasound equipment, group simulations and individual teaching.

Course content includes high-risk pregnancy, childbirth puerpera and high-risk newborn babies, laboratory practice on ultrasound simulators and perineorrhaphy simulators, and simulation studies based on deviations from normality and emergency studies based on disaster scenarios. A step-by-step OSCE develops practical midwifery skills.

Students develop a midwifery identity through continuous practice in three pregnancies by providing care and support throughout pregnancy, delivery, puerperium and postnatal care. They assist in at least 12 midwife or doctor supervised deliveries.

• Midwifery Master’s Course Syllabus [PDFファイル／136KB]

After Graduation and Licensure

Graduates receive a nursing science master's degree and can sit for the national midwifery examination.

Our graduates work in perinatal maternal and child medical centers for high-risk maternal care and NICU care, hospitals and clinics with more than 1,000 deliveries per year, hospitals and clinics with in-house midwifery and outpatient midwifery services and baby-friendly hospitals.