Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to clarify the structure of learning expected of student-midwives at assisting their first three deliveries.
Methods
The participants in this qualitative descriptive study were eight midwives concurrently responsible for the midwifery care and the education of student-midwives, especially for guiding them as they learn delivery. Data collection occurred in two phases. First, the debriefing session between students and their mentors after the delivery was observed. Then, several days after the debriefing sessions, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the midwives. Interviews were transcribed verbatim to allow descriptive and inductive content analysis.
Results
From the analysis, the following five themes were identified; "increase clinical knowledge and skills and judgment as they experience deliveries", "build the attitudes and sensibilities as clinical practitioners", "develop ways of the learning in clinical situations and expand the realistic practice", "learn to clarify and expand their learning by exploiting every debriefing session", "strengthen aspirations to be a midwife".
Considering relationships among these themes, the structure of learning expected of student-midwives at assisting their first three deliveries was structuralized as follows.
Midwives expect the students basically to "learn to clarify and expand their learning by exploiting every debriefing session", and to "develop ways of the learning in clinical situation and expand the realistic practice". Especially, midwives expect the students to "increase clinical knowledge and skills and judgment as they experience deliveries", "build the attitudes and sensibilities as clinical practitioners". And finally, Midwives expect that the students' clinical learning with them would be oriented to "strengthen their aspirations to be a midwife".
Conclusion
From the analysis, a structure of the themes was developed. At the core of what midwives expect of the student-midwives throughout the practical training is increasing knowledge, skills and judgement, and midwives also expect the students to build the attitudes and sensibilities as clinical practitioners. And midwives consider that the debriefing session is an important process for this learning and helping students exploit it is an objective of mentors. Therefore, midwives also expect that the students will develop ways of the learning in clinical situation and expand the realistic practice and become stronger in their motivation to become midwives through learning to clarify and expanding their leraning by exploiting every deberiefing session with their mentors at the clinical sites.
