The University of Malta is the highest teaching institution in Malta and is structured in line with the Bologna Process and the European Higher Education Area.  There are some 11,500 students including over 1000 international students from 92 different countries, following full-time or part-time diploma, degree, masters, and doctoral studies.

Nursing and midwifery studies are located within the Faculty of Health Sciences.

  • The Department of Nursing offers full-time courses at undergraduate level in general and mental health nursing.  The Department leads an online degree in Health Science for qualified health professionals and offers courses at Masters level in Nursing and Mental Health Nursing.

  • The Department of Midwifery offers a full-time direct entry undergraduate and Masters level programme.  Undergraduate courses in nursing/midwifery lead to registration with the Council for Nurses and Midwives Malta.

Both Departments support nurses/midwives to continue their studies at Doctoral level and seek to foster collaboration with other Universities and actively promote student and faculty exchange through the Erasmus programme.

Prof. Donia BaldacchinoImage of Professor Donia Baldacchino

EPICC Strategic Partner

Appointed in Malta as the First Professor in Nursing by the University of Malta on the 17th July 2013, Prof. Donia Baldacchino was a Registered Nurse, who during her clinical career, worked in the Intensive Therapy Unit and contributed towards the opening of the Renal Dialysis Unit in Malta.

Following graduation in Adult Education in Garnett College London, Donia started teaching at the nursing school in 1984.  Following transfer of nursing and paramedical courses into tertiary education in 1989, Donia graduated with BSc (Hons) Nursing at the University of Malta, MSc at King’s College London, and PhD at the University of Hull, Yorkshire, UK.  Her research addressed holistic care especially embracing the spiritual dimension of care in stress and illness of patients and has disseminated her research findings in local and international conferences and in various international nursing journals.  The ‘Spiritual Coping Strategies Scale’ developed by Donia in her PhD studies has now been translated by foreign researchers into Italian, Spanish and Persian languages and is being used to collect data from patients with Christian and Islamic religious affiliations.  Her expertise extended to nursing education and practice including supervision and examination of PhD students in Malta and foreign countries.

Her teaching and research expertise were acknowledged by foreign universities such as, University of South Wales and Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, USA, who awarded her various academic, research and collaborative posts.  Donia’s research in the clinical and educational fields reinforced the importance of the vocational perspective of the nurse ‘being in doing’ and continuing education which enables healthcare professionals to consistently provide effective holistic care.

​Donia passed away in March 2017.

Dr. Josephine Attard, PhD, SN, SCM, PGCE

EPICC Strategic PartnerImage of Dr Josephine Attard

Dr. Josephine Attard is the Head of Department (Midwifery) at the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Malta.  Josephine qualified as Nurse-Midwife in 1981 and pursued clinical experience in the areas of maternity care.  She obtained a postgraduate certificate in education in 1991 from the University of Malta, an MSc in Nursing/Midwifery Education in 1999 and Doctoral Degree from the University of South Wales, UK, in 2015.

Her PhD on the design and evaluation of a competency framework addresses the need for a rigorous and validated framework in spiritual care to guide the education and practice of nurses/midwives.  Josephine is currently teaching and supervising midwifery students on the Bachelors and Masters Midwifery Programmes, Coordinating the MSc Midwifery Studies and the Erasmus Midwifery programme.  She has published in the area of spiritual care in nursing/midwifery education, practises on part-time basis as a Clinical Midwife in the private sector, is married and the mother of 2 teenagers.