Intégration universitaire des écoles de sages-femmes

As part of the European harmonisation of higher education, from the beginning of the 2010 new academic year midwifery training is going to be integrated, with the implementation of the licence (bachelor's degree), first year common to health studies. The Hospital, Patients, Health, Territories (HPST) law enables initial midwifery training to be legally organised within universities but does not tackle the question of integrating the schools of midwifery into the university system. This integration meets several objectives underlined in this article. The law for the freedom and responsibility of universities allows universities the freedom to integrate new structures according to different modalities, which are listed. Finally, integration in the form of a university school type component offers lots of advantages, it is the legal structure, which seems the most suitable. But the transfer of schools of midwifery to the university system requires a study of the human, architectural, financial and legal resources, which are by nature extremely numerous and complex issues. The prospect of transferring schools of midwifery to the university system constitutes the rough outline of an incontrovertible contractualisation process. From now on, integration of the complete maieutics curriculum into the university system falls within the scope of a European dynamic and can be achieved through the preservation of an autonomous strand; recognition of the Masters level diplôme d'État (state diploma); plus the creation of the doctorate with registration of maieutics as an academic discipline.