Professionalism, public confidence and course application.

Becoming a midwife is the 16th series of 'Midwifery basics' targeted at practicing midwives and midwifery students. The aim of these articles is to provide information to raise awareness of the impact of professionalism on women's experience, consider the implications for midwives' practice and encourage midwives to seed further information through a series of activities relating to the topic. In this second article of the series, Jancis Sheperd considers why professionalism in an issue in maintaining public confidence, why midwives need to demonstrate good health and good character and how applicants are selected for midwifery courses to meet these attributes.