Registered nurses are training to become registered midwives in their local communities and hospitals through a Charles Sturt University (CSU) distance education course which aims to keep midwives in inland Australia. The students will gather at CSU’s Wagga Wagga Campus this week for their bi-annual residential school, where they supplement distance education with face-to-face teaching. Lecturer in nursing and midwifery, Ms Pam Shackleton, says the student midwives remain a valuable asset for the community by working at their local hospitals across Australia while completing the year-long course. “The sixty five nurses who will finish their midwifery training at the end of this year will be warmly welcomed and will go a long way to addressing the Australia-wide shortage of more than 600 midwives,” she said.