Challenges of clinical learning for student midwives.
OBJECTIVE
to identify factors which affect the learning of clinical skills by student midwives.


METHODS
ethnographic, grounded theory.


METHODS
a large urban maternity hospital and its community area in the south of England.


METHODS
student midwives, midwives, midwifery managers and teachers.


METHODS
by observation in clinical settings and interviews.


CONCLUSIONS
observation, indirect learning and trial and error were the strategies used by midwives and students in order to obtain competency in clinical skills. However, anxiety, because of inadequate instruction and supervision and poor communication, interfered with learning and students felt ill prepared to function as midwives.


CONCLUSIONS
clinical midwives need to be educated to facilitate the transfer of theoretical learning into clinical practice, and teachers need to re-learn the experience of being a clinical midwife.
Chamberlain
M
M
Faculty of Nursing, University of Sydney, Royal North Shore Hospital, St. Leonards, Australia.
D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology; D002983:Clinical Competence; D003142:Communication; D004508:Education, Nursing, Baccalaureate / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D007858:Learning; D009721:Nurse Midwives / Q000193:education*; D015402:Nursing Education Research; D015404:Nursing Methodology Research; D013338:Students, Nursing / Q000523:psychology*