Abstract
Purpose
We examined historic processes related to nurse midwife education in Japan to elucidate current nurse midwife education. As background of the government establishment midwife training school establishment, we examined the contemporary state of educational facilities, teachers, and education contents.
Method
To elucidate aspects of midwife education that started at the Tokyo Municipal Hospital Midwife Training School, a midwife training school in Tokyo, the authors examined Tokyo Archive Building documents, medical journals, official daily gazettes, and newspapers.
Results
Results show that, by 1890, nine training organizations were operating in Tokyo. For a Bachelor of Medicine, physicians were required to graduate from another section. The Department of the Interior licensed midwives after they received education.
Training schools commonly enrolled students for 1.5-year courses, but examination of the total course hours showed vast differences of 400-1,200 hr. Fields emphasized in the actual curriculum varied, variously emphasizing experimental medicine, abnormality of midwife studies, and midwife studies. Various midwives were so educated, provoking the criticisms voiced by Hamada.
The total number of hours was equivalent when we compared the government establishment midwife training school with the Tokyo midwife school. The time distribution differed. Practical education is respected in the government establishment midwife school, and that assigned half of the total education time to practical education. Whereas a lecture is made much of in the Tokyo midwife school, that awarded 10% of the degree to the total time for practical education and 80% for lectures. Regarding the lectures themselves, the medicine and midwife study components were about evenly divided.
Conclusions
It is different in a curriculum what you make much of. Curricula differ in terms of their characterization of the role of the midwife. Future studies will examine midwife education contents based on descriptions by physicians and midwives who underwent education. . We want to make use of this results of research for nurse midwife education.
