New midwifery course set to boost Mackay’s birthing services for generations to come

A new midwifery course at JCU is set to boost the quality of services in Mackay, training and retaining a local workforce.

New midwifery course at JCU will train locals where they’re most needed.

A midwifery course “years in the making” has become available in Mackay and is being described as an outstanding opportunity for boosting regional birthing services in the region.

Fifteen new registered nurses were welcomed to the JCU Ngudya Yamba Mackay campus this morning to kick off an 18 month long postgraduate course which is prepping the new recruits for a career in pre-birth, labour, and post-natal care.

The program will open new doors for Mackay’s doctor shortage, eliminating travel to Townsville for the nurses who can take up training at Mackay Base Hospital and the Mater.

(group photo) New midwifery course to boost birthing service to Mackay, January 20 2025

Senior Lecturer for JCU Dr Maude Chapman says while midwives have become the “unicorns” of the health system now that they’re so few and far between, Mackay will bear the opportunities of this recruitment for generations to come.

“If we can grow our own healthcare workforce, then that benefits the region in a generational way because you keep people here. So they tend to stay, have their families.

“It provides a quality service for the community because we’re recruiting locally, people know people, so they know what happens,” she said.

Mayor Greg Williamson welcomed the new JCU recruits describing the event as “absolutely outstanding”

Juggling being a mother of two children and working as a nurse, Jessica McGare jumped at the opportunity to study midwifery in her hometown.

“It’s really important to have that flexibility,” she said.

Flying in from the coastal mining town of Weipa — which has only six midwives — Grace Prentice is no stranger to the struggles of working in a rural birthing ward.

She says the rural staff shortage and lack of resources is a big reason why she took up the course in the first place.

Grace Prentice

“As a nurse at the moment in Weipa, you also help the midwives in the birth suit and with anything maternity related,” she said

“So, doing this course as well will give me that bit more of a confidence to be able to help them out in an emergency.”

Mayor Greg Williamson was there to thank the students for contributing to creating regional opportunities.

“Medicine and health in our region employs about 8,500 people. And when you range out to the next 20 years, it’s mental health, it’s medicine, it’s the delivery of services at a medical level that will be the most important thing for communities,” he said.

The course recruits bring home much needed help to Mackay’s health system, in particularly its birthing ward after shocking details emerged in 2022 of “sub standard clinical care” at the Mackay Base Hospital.

The report found that “inadequate” care spanning over the course of ten years led to three baby deaths.

Originally published as New midwifery course set to boost Mackay’s birthing services for generations to come