Innovation
A small team of midwife teachers and medical colleagues have collaborated together to develop an innovative inter professional teaching strategy between final year midwifery students and 4th year medical students. The planned workshops involve the midwifery students teaching the medical students on a variety of aspects of labour and birth. The midwifery students adopt various roles including mother, partner, midwife and narrator and intersperse short role-plays with teaching on core care skills for labour and birth. These sessions are facilitated by a member of the midwifery teaching team to ensure a high quality learning experience. The midwifery students use a variety of birthing mannequins and support aids to promote student learning. The sessions also encourage ‘hands on’ participation by the medical students to enhance their learning experience. The sessions are delivered once every six weeks to a new intake of 4th year medical students who are about to embark on their obstetric and gynaecology placement. The ratio of midwifery students to medical students is approximately 5:12.
What prompted innovation?
During 4th year, medical students complete 6 weeks’ obstetric/gynaecology placement, which involves participation in caring for and delivering a small number of women in the labour ward setting. It was identified that medical students found this placement daunting and felt unsure about their role within this busy and intense setting. As a result it was thought that this would be an ideal opportunity for final year midwifery students to teach and facilitate learning in relation to normal labour and birth to the medical students. There is an increasing recognition of the need for improving inter-professional relationships within the clinical practice area (DoH, 2001). Evidence would support that health care professionals who are able to communicate and work effectively together and who have a mutual respect and understanding for one another’s roles will provide a higher standard of care (McPherson et al, 2001; Begley, 2008). Research also supports the influence of effective team working on increased client satisfaction (Meterko et al, 2004).
What makes innovation different?
This is an innovative idea which promotes the building of relationships between two sets of health professionals and encourages an understanding of each other’s professional roles. The teaching sessions promote the normalisation of birth whereas often, in the past, integration of these two professional groups was associated with more complex, medicalised situations. Facilitating a teaching session in the final year of the midwifery programme enhances student autonomy. It further prepares the student for their professional role, which enhances employability.
Changes in practice
Medical students have reported through formal evaluation that relationships within the labour ward setting are more positive towards them and that they feel more confident commencing their labour ward placement. Midwifery students have described an increase in confidence in relation to transmitting knowledge and that this would provide more confidence to teach within the clinical practice setting. Both groups of students have also identified an increased understanding of one another’s roles, which should promote more positive working relationships within the clinical practice setting.
Impact
To date, evaluation has been carried out through both questionnaire and informal discussion with both groups of students over the past year. Ethical approval is currently being sought to carry out a more detailed qualitative analysis of the outcomes of this learning and teaching strategy. Evaluations to date have identified that both the midwifery and medical students develop a better understanding of each other’s roles. Midwifery students have indicated that they found the experience positive and that it helps them to deliver teaching within the work setting to both junior midwifery students and to clients in their care.
Dissemination
Within the School of Nursing and Midwifery, the team was awarded a teaching innovation award which is recognised across the School as good practice. There has been a poster presentation at the Irish Network of Medical Educators conference in Dublin in February 2013 entitled ‘Simulated interprofessional teaching session on labour and childbirth for undergraduate medical students’. Ethical approval is currently being sought to formalise a study on midwifery student confidence, the findings of which will be disseminated to both national and international, peer reviewed journals.