For Midwife Educators: Evaluation Methods in Clinical Practices

Abstract

Methods that provide active participation and holistic development of the student should be used in midwifery education. Clinical applications, one of these methods, have a critical importance in midwifery education. With clinical applications, a midwifery student has the opportunity to build knowledge, skills, abilities, confidence and midwifery identity. For this reason, midwifery students should be prepared and evaluated with clinical practice training in order to provide quality midwifery care services. With the evaluations, the learning levels and developmental stages of the students are determined. In general, educators evaluate students by observing when they teach or treat patients. However, with this assessment method, the student cannot be evaluated in every way, and as a result, they are exposed to an inconsistent scoring system based only on the individual observation of the educator. Instead, assessment methods that provide clear and understandable written feedback to both students and educators should be preferred. With the feedback given, the student will have the opportunity to develop his/her skills by noticing where his/her deficiencies or mistakes are. There are several proven assessment methods that offer quality feedback. With this study, it is aimed to present some clinical evaluation methods that midwife educators can use in the form of compilation while evaluating midwifery students in clinical practice.