GRADUATES FROM HOL receive a Diploma in Midwifery. Graduation requirements meet or exceed National American Registry of Midwives (NARM) standards. We encourage students to go through the NARM process and sit for the NARM exams upon graduation. These exams allow individuals to become nationally certified and recognized as a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM). A CPM primarily practices in the home or birth center. Most hospitals do not recognize a CPM. Many states use the CPM as their standard for certification for direct entry midwives doing home-births.

Most graduates of HOL have their own home-birth practice caring for women and their families through pregnancy, labor, birth, and postpartum. Some graduates do labor support in hospitals and teach childbirth classes. They may also have a well women practice, or an alternative therapy practice. Graduates may work in women’s health centers, be a medical assistant, or in some states, start their own birth centers.
 

HOL has a rigorous academic program. Course work is designed to teach students how to support and educate women and their families through the childbearing years at home, in birth centers, at clinics, and in hospitals. Students learn how to provide high quality health care by combining the knowledge of modern medical skills and the clinical judgment to detect problems with the emotional, psychological and spiritual needs of the woman and her family. These skills are enhanced by the additional education of preventative and complementary approaches.

This program requires a strong commitment to self-study. Students should expect to spend at least 15 hours a week doing independent study.

We understand that students are coming to Hands of Light from diverse backgrounds, and have a wide variety of academic experience. It is not unusual for students to have been out of school for some time.

There are several courses in the curriculum expressly to help students transition into the program.
Orientation
Study Skills
Study Group
Language Arts

HOL offers: free tutoring
Reduced cost personal counseling
(with an on staff psychotherapist.)
Writing assistance program

ACADEMIC COUNSELING
Individual student meetings are held twice a year so that students may have time to express questions and concerns about their progress. It is also a time to assist students in developing future plans. We find this to be especially important during the prectorship. Hands of Light also holds school-wide meetings twice a year.

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