Hello everyone and Happy New Year! I hope that you have all enjoyed the festive season and are excited to see the start of 2025.
This time last year, my editorial focused on ‘looking forward’ to the new year, drawing on the Royal College of Midwives' (2023) State of Midwifery Education report and the first article in our series on midwifery education. A year later, this January issue includes the final article in the series, in which Chenery-Morris and Divers (2025) explore the academic level of the midwifery profession. It is a topic well-suited to our Sapientia section, which we hope continues to provide a platform for students and educators to share their hard work with the wider midwifery community.
There is continuing focus on the provision of education for student midwives. In December last year, a report was published on practice learning in nursing and midwifery education (Palmer et al, 2024). The report's conclusions were that clearer guidance and consistent standards are needed, supervision and assessment need strengthening, and each UK nation should agree strategies to ensure high-quality accessible placements for students.
The report also investigated simulated practice learning. Stakeholders concluded that ‘simulation can be an invaluable tool for helping students’, but the resources and staff experience needed to design and deliver this form of education were barriers to expanding its use (Palmer et al, 2024).
Simulation is of increasing interest in midwifery education, and several of our articles last year focused on simulation (Leader, 2024; Sanders et al, 2024; Stockdale et al, 2024). In December, Birmingham Women's Hospital announced the launch of the NHS's first simulation suite for maternal and neonatal health (Clowes, 2024). The suite includes a range of simulated wards and departments, and Matt Nash, a consultant neonatologist and clinical director for maternity and neonates at the hospital, commented that he was ‘blown away by the new simulation lab … It's a game-changer for us, as no other simulation lab provides this level of fidelity or realism in a maternity and neonatal setting’ (Clowes, 2024).
As 2025 begins, and students and educators alike return for the start of a new term, I hope that the year brings further innovations to support the crucial work done to train student midwives to deliver high-quality care to women and their families.