Midwifery student seizes opportunity to support European event

A Midwifery student brought new skills to the fore to help boost attendance numbers for a major international conference held earlier this month.

Diana Sarkyova, originally from Bulgaria, is in the final year of her degree in Midwifery at University of Northampton (UON) and is also a member of the prestigious Florence Network.

The Florence Network aims to enhance the quality of European higher education in nursing and midwifery, through international cooperation in education, research and development.

One of the big items in their calendar is their annual meeting and Diana was one of the students who attended last year’s event. Since then, she has been part of their events board, helping to promote this year’s meeting to fellow students.

The theme of the 2025 meeting – held in the Netherlands – was ‘Professional Leadership’ and Diana (pictured second from left) talks about what she’s been up to: “The event ran for a whole week, I was there from the start to the end and it was an amazing experience. There were incredible talks and I was part of a group working on a project about how we see midwifery in 2050.

“We looked at the advancing use of AI, the impact of this and other technological advancements on the universal midwifery system and how we’re going to manage that while keeping the profession’s human touch. We then presented our thoughts and findings to the attendees, which itself was wonderful!”

Diana worked alongside the Florence Network’s visibility team to ensure consistent and timely communications about the event, encouraging as many members as possible to attend. Diana adds: “I’ve been busy creating promotional copy for the Network’s newsletter, and it was then shared with the visibility student member, who then distributed it across various social media platforms, particularly Instagram.

“I concentrated on promoting the event to student members and I think being a student myself helped me to ‘pitch’ things more accurately to that section of their membership. I spoke with other students; they had read the newsletter and the student board’s social media content and said this was instrumental in them attending.”

With just a few months to go until she becomes a qualified midwife, Diana is looking forward to fulfilling an unofficial family ‘legacy’, as she concludes: “My mum is a midwife back in Bulgaria where things are very different to here in the UK – there, the doctor oversees the delivery and midwives support them.

“She likes that we are more empowered over here and that the system is behind us more. She’s so proud of what I’m doing and how I’ve gone outside of my comfort zone with the work I’ve done for the Florence Network. I graduate at the end of this and I’m looking forward to seeing her there in the audience as I ‘cross the stage’ at Royal & Derngate.”

Find out more about Midwifery at University of Northampton.