Nurse-Midwifery

Educational Formats

If you are:

  • A student without a nursing background, you are required to attend classes on campus and complete your clinical hours during your PreSpecialty year within approximately a two-hour drive of Nashville. For at least the first two semesters of the NM specialty, students will need to live in the Nashville area. The nurse-midwifery specialty requires weekly face-to-face coursework the first semester and gradually decreases the face-to-face time as the summer progresses. The last semester, there is only a week at the beginning and end of the semester.
  • A registered nurse with a BSN or MSN, you enter directly into the specialty and you will complete your Nurse-Midwifery courses via a hybrid-learning format.
  •  Hybrid Course Format means you take on campus didactic classes with a changing schedule of clinical rotations and sites:

    • Fall semester – There are face-to-face classes three days a week on campus and one clinical day where all students rotate through the VUSN faculty nurse-midwifery practice.

    • Spring semester – Outpatient Rotations – Three days per week at a clinical site either in Middle Tennessee, or usually within approximately a three- to four- hour driving distance from Nashville. There are face-to-face classes two days a week, so clinicals must be close enough to return to Nashville weekly.

    • Summer semester – Intrapartum/Post-partum and Newborn Rotations – you will spend the first month of the semester on campus, learning skills needed to begin attending births. 
      Once you have completed skills check offs, you begin attending your first births at clinical sites which may be either in the Middle Tennessee area, or across the country where we have excellent clinical sites.

    • Fall semester – You are on campus for approximately one week at the beginning and end of the semester. The remainder of the semester is spent at your clinical site, which may be in the Middle Tennessee area or in a variety of other states

Part-time students will take one synchronous, on-site course that meets once per week in their first Fall semester; all other courses this semester will be online and asynchronous.  In their first spring semester, all courses will be online and predominately asynchronous.  In the first summer of coursework, there will on-site classes in the month of May and then online, synchronous sessions once per week for the remainder of the semester, as well as an online asynchronous course.    The hybrid format of the second year of part-time study is described above. 

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