Dear Reem,

 

I have kept your email to respond to you as soon as I can..I know that you already received lots of responses from midwifery colleagues, I wanted to answer you and give you examples from Palestine,

 

who is their mentor (school teacher or midwives at the clinical settings)

We do both. Some midwifery programs use school teachers who are professional midwives and others use midwives in the clinical settings. From our experience, it is more efficient and beneficial for the student and the faculty to use school teachers as then they would be following up on what they discussed in theory especially when the real health services are not up to standards. PLUS this gives the midwifery faculty the opportunity to keep up their own clinical skills which is quit important too.

 

what is the ideal ration of midwifery teachers to midwifery students?

As part of the philosophy of midwifery (one-to-one individualize care),, We try to use this model also for midwifery students mentoring. So, if in the labor and delivery ward, the mentor will be responsible for 2-3 students who will be caring for the same number of women in labor. So, we assume that the teacher will be actually supervising 2 students, 2 women in labor and 2 fetuses which is consumes time and lots of efforts. However, if clinical training in the postpartum/Gyna wards, the midwifery teacher we use 1: 6 ratio. In the are of Antenatal care, that varies and depend on the setup and the scope of midwifery practice allowed in each specific setting.

 

what is the expected number of student midwives to be enrolled at BSc programme?
You can anticipate this simply by trying to figure out the available clinical settings that you can use all times of the study periods. Also, take into consideration if you are running any other programs that will be using same clinical settings i.e. nursing.  As loading so many students in one place will mainly affect the quality of training for midwifery students especially if you are running out a competency-based curriculum. We used to coordinate our clinical training rotations with nursing programs and other universities and colleges using same clinical sites.  The number also depend on the available resources i.e. faculty and clinical instructors. From our experience, we recommend a maximum of 20-25 midwifery students if you are running midwifery programs as part of a university system (taking into consideration the availability of clinical settings, faculty and rotations).  However, this number can be too much if the available resources are not adequate.

 

what are the requirements for clinical midwives, to be mentors (educational level, work experiences,...)

Clinical midwives can be the school teachers (an ideal if you can do that). Or clinical midwives who have a degree (Bachelor or high diploma) in midwifery. We used to choose based on the experience and how busy the setting where the midwife is working. But, she should be competent and comfortable with all midwifery competencies that you will be asking for your students as she should be able to teach, guide and coach them till they are capable. In certain programs, we used to prefer those clinical midwives who attended any mentorship course or training. If you as a university can do this for hospitals, this can help you to use them later for clinical training.

 

how is the payment solved (for clinical midwives, who are mentors and for the students).
If you used the school teacher, then you got financial problems! As this should be counted part of their teaching load. But, if used clinical midwives, universities pays them a sum of money agreed upon at the end of the semester.

 

I really do recommend you to use midwives as school faculty as this will help you a lot in planning, stability, controlling quality, financials,….etc.

 

I do apologize as I have did very quickly,, but I do understand your dilemmas as I have been into all this before!!!! I hope this is helpful.

Should you need further clarifications, please contact me!

 

Best,

 

Sahar Hassan CNM MSN

Midwifery and reproductive Health consultant

Academic Researcher and Trainer

Women’s Health Unit

Institute of Community and Public Health

Birzeit University

Occupied Palestinian Territory

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