Midwife at Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF)

As a midwife with MSF your experience in both complicated and normal deliveries will be essential.

From visiting expectant mums deep in the jungle to carrying out ante-natal checks, to training birth attendants in busy maternity departments in big hospital settings, MSF midwives are a vital part of most project teams.

Responsibilities 

Our midwives often have a dual responsibility; working in health centres and conducting outreach work in the community. No matter what the context – whether working in natural disasters, conflicts or poverty-affected communities – babies will continue to be born and midwives will always be needed. 
 
It’s a challenging and rewarding role and you will be responsible for some or all of the following: 

• Pre and post-delivery care 
• Deliveries, often complicated 
• Care of survivors of sexual violence 
• Setting up maternity departments in new health centres or hospitals 
• Working with community birth attendants to ensure safe community birthing practices 
• Running awareness programs in the community 
• Training local midwives 
• On-call care, often 24 hours 

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in midwifery or a Degree in nursing with the exception of Community Health Nursing.
• All nurses applying to the midwifery position must have over 2 years’ experience working in a busy labor ward.
• Valid registration
• Experience in supervising, managing and training others
• Experience of obstetric emergencies/complicated deliveries, termination of pregnancy, sexual violence
• Willingness to be regularly on call for difficult and complicated deliveries
• Over three months experience of working in a low resource settings
• Willingness to work in unstable areas
• Available for six to nine months
• Adaptable and able to work in a multi-cultural team
• Flexible and able to manage stress
• Fluency in English

Desirable

• Tropical nursing diploma
• Knowledge of STDs/HIV/AIDS
• Family planning experience
• Community midwifery experience
• Experience working in a similar organisation​
• Knowledge of other working languages e.g French and or Arabic