Midwife in France: Training, the Diploma and Career Paths

Becoming a midwife means practising a medical profession centred on the mother and the newborn: following a pregnancy, delivering births that unfold normally, supporting the first days of life and handling part of preventive gynaecological care. It is a job of responsibility and autonomy, one that families often place awkwardly somewhere between nursing and medicine.

This profile describes the French route to the job, and it is worth stating the misconception to correct at once: in France a midwife is not a medical auxiliary. She belongs to the MMOP track (medicine, midwifery, dentistry, pharmacy) and holds prescribing rights. Access therefore runs through the shared first year of health studies, PASS or L.AS, exactly like medicine or pharmacy. That is a major difference from nursing, where entry to a training institute is decided on a Parcoursup file.

For an international reader, a note on the vocabulary. PASS stands for “parcours d’accès spécifique santé”, the first health year with a health major. L.AS stands for “licence avec option accès santé”, a regular bachelor’s degree with a health-access minor. Both are the gateways to France’s regulated health professions. This profile sets out the real path, reshaped by the 2024 reform, the day-to-day depending on where you work, sourced pay figures and the profile the job suits, without overselling it and without hiding the selectivity of entry or the burden of on-call shifts. A dedicated section at the end looks at what a French midwifery diploma is worth outside France.

The job of midwife at a glance

A midwife handles the medical follow-up of pregnancy, delivers physiological births, monitors mother and child after the birth, and runs preventive and contraception consultations. The title is protected: you cannot practise without holding the corresponding State Diploma and being registered with the Conseil national de l’Ordre des sages-femmes, the national professional body of midwives.

Where you practise varies: public hospital maternity units, private clinics, private practice (own consulting rooms, home visits), maternal and infant protection services (PMI), health centres. The status follows: civil servant in the public hospital service, private-sector employee, or self-employed professional. According to the Ordre, most midwives are salaried in hospitals, while a significant share work in private practice or in a mixed arrangement.

The diploma is now set at bac +6. As a framing figure, the Conseil national de l’Ordre des sages-femmes reported around 25,800 practising midwives in France in early 2024, with an average age close to 41. Numbers have grown over the past decade, but the profession is still marked by regional shortages.

The day-to-day: duties and setting

The day-to-day depends heavily on where you work, but several duties define the job:

• Handling the medical follow-up of pregnancy: consultations, clinical examinations, follow-up ultrasound scans, prescribing tests and treatments.
• Monitoring labour and delivering births that unfold normally, in the delivery room.
• Spotting at-risk situations and handing over to the obstetrician-gynaecologist or the paediatrician as soon as a pathology appears.
• Providing postnatal follow-up for mother and newborn, breastfeeding support, and rehabilitation.
• Carrying out preventive gynaecological follow-up and prescribing contraception.
• Informing, educating and supporting women, including in difficult situations (perinatal bereavement, precarity).

The setting changes everything. In a hospital, you work as a team, in 12-hour on-call shifts, with nights, weekends and a heavy delivery-room workload. In private practice, you follow a patient base in consulting rooms or at home, in autonomy, with an entrepreneurial dimension. In a PMI service, the rhythm is steadier, geared towards prevention and social support.

A typical day

Take a fictional example. Camille, a midwife in a maternity unit, starts her shift at 8 a.m. She takes the handover, does a round of the delivery-room patients, and monitors a labour that is progressing. Mid-morning she supports a physiological birth, sees to the newborn’s first care, then reassures an anxious mother-to-be. The afternoon mixes follow-up consultations, monitoring, and coordination with the obstetrician over a case that is turning complicated. She hands over to the night team before leaving. Intense pace, constant responsibility, and a singular place at the moment of birth.

The French route: from the baccalauréat to the diploma

The path is demanding and is decided from the first year. After the baccalauréat you enrol through Parcoursup in PASS (specific health-access pathway) or L.AS (a bachelor’s degree with a health-access option). It is this first year, and the ranking that closes it, that opens or closes access to a school of midwifery. There are around forty of them in France, almost all public and attached to a hospital or embedded in a university.

On baccalauréat subjects, the most coherent combination is the biology (SVT) specialism with physics-chemistry, possibly rounded out with mathematics. These give the scientific grounding required in PASS or L.AS, where the selection is real.

Since the 2024 reform (decree of 3 July 2024), the course lasts six years in total: one first health year, then five years in a school of midwifery organised into three cycles. It now leads to the State Diploma of Doctor of Midwifery (diplôme d’État de docteur en maïeutique, bac +6), awarded after validating the coursework, the placements, the clinical synthesis certificate and the defence of a professional thesis. Students who entered before this reform still come under the older State Diploma of Midwife (bac +5). The first Doctor of Midwifery diplomas will be awarded at the end of the 2028-2029 academic year.

Alternative routes exist: bridges are open from other health studies, and access to midwifery is shaped first at the PASS-or-L.AS decision. Our dedicated guide helps choose between the two (link below).

Career paths, employability and pay

The market is fairly favourable. Midwifery is classed as in short supply in employment projections (work by the Dares and France Travail), with women’s health needs partly unmet, notably in rural areas and in some maternity units. Graduates usually find work quickly, in hospitals and in private practice alike, even though working conditions remain demanding.

On pay, in the public hospital service a newly qualified midwife earns roughly 2,200 euros gross a month at the first step in 2025 (index-based pay scale, before premiums), plus supplements for on-call duty, nights, Sundays and public holidays. Pay rises with seniority and by moving to a higher grade, the final step of the top grade exceeding 4,100 euros gross. In private practice, income varies widely with activity and patient base.

For progression, you can move towards obstetric ultrasound, maternity-unit coordination, teaching in a school of midwifery, research (the new third cycle brings the profession closer to the university model), or setting up in private practice after a few years in hospital.

Who the job suits: qualities and interests

The job calls for clinical rigour, composure (a physiological situation can turn in minutes), real stamina (on-call shifts, nights, long spells on your feet) and a solid sense of human contact. You have to decide fast, work as a team and accompany the most intimate moments, from the joy of birth to perinatal bereavement.

Honest counter-indications: on-call shifts and nights weigh on personal life, especially early on in a hospital. The emotional load is heavy and the medical responsibility real. This is not a job for someone seeking predictable days or a strictly desk-bound setting. The selectivity of the first health year also demands a sustained capacity for work from the start.

If the idea of accompanying birth appeals but you are still torn between several health routes, it can help to lay the plan out. An orientation review helps weigh up a taste for care, tolerance for on-call shifts and one’s relationship to the PASS-or-L.AS selection, before locking in a Parcoursup choice. Our resources on health careers open that reflection without rushing the decision.

Bridges and reorientation: a wrong turn is not the end

Nothing is set in stone. The first health year shares a common core with medicine, pharmacy and dentistry: a student aiming for midwifery can, depending on ranking and plan, switch to another health track, or the reverse. And a first health year that is not validated is never wasted: L.AS keeps a home bachelor’s degree that lets you continue elsewhere.

Neighbouring jobs are worth a look before deciding: the nurse (another caring profession, but with a route that does not go through PASS or L.AS), the paediatric nurse, the gynaecologist (via medical studies), or working in a PMI service. Each answers a different sensitivity in supporting women and children.

An international perspective

This profile describes the French route. For an international or expatriate family, the natural question is what a French midwifery diploma is worth elsewhere, and the answer here is unusually clear.

Midwife is one of the health professions covered by automatic recognition across the European Union and the European Economic Area, under Directive 2005/36/EC. Alongside doctor, nurse responsible for general care, dental practitioner, pharmacist, veterinary surgeon and architect, the midwife is a “sectoral” profession whose training has been harmonised at European level. In practice, a French State Diploma of midwifery is recognised automatically in the other EU/EEA member states (and, by agreement, in Switzerland): the holder does not have to sit an equivalence exam, and registers with the host country’s professional body subject to language and administrative checks. This is a real, concrete portability that most other French diplomas do not enjoy.

Two limits are worth stating plainly, so as not to oversell it. First, automatic recognition covers the EU/EEA and Switzerland, not the rest of the world. In the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, the Gulf states or elsewhere, a French midwife is subject to the national regulator’s rules (registration, sometimes exams, language tests, supervised practice); recognition is possible but case by case, never automatic. Second, the profession itself is regulated everywhere: even within the EU, you register in the country where you practise and follow its rules on scope of practice, which vary from one state to another.

So who is the French route right for? It makes clear sense for a family already inside the French or AEFE system, for a binational family, and above all for anyone who plans to practise in France or elsewhere in the EU/EEA, where the diploma travels well. If the goal is to practise mainly in an English-speaking country outside Europe, it is worth looking early at that country’s own midwifery training and registration rules, rather than assuming a French diploma will transfer directly.

Key takeaways

• Medical profession: the midwife belongs to the MMOP track, with prescribing rights and autonomous practice over the physiological pregnancy.
• Access route: first health year (PASS or L.AS) through Parcoursup, then a school of midwifery by ranking. Selective.
• Diploma and duration: State Diploma of Doctor of Midwifery, bac +6 (2024 reform). Previously the State Diploma of Midwife, bac +5.
• Market: profession in short supply, around 25,800 practising midwives in early 2024 (Ordre des sages-femmes).
• Pay: around 2,200 euros gross a month early in a public hospital career (2025), before on-call premiums.
• International note: the diploma benefits from automatic recognition across the EU/EEA under Directive 2005/36/EC, but not outside Europe.

Going further

• The careers hub of the Axiom guide
• Career profile: nurse
• Career profile: physiotherapist
• ONISEP: midwifery studies (in French)
• Your Europe: recognition of professional qualifications in the EU
• Conseil national de l’Ordre des sages-femmes: demographic data (in French)

Written by the Axiom Orientation team.