The art of student continuity experience

Abstract

The Bachelor of Midwifery Degree requires students to each complete 30 Continuity experiences with women over three years. In a regional hospital with 850 births per year and the potential for 45 Student Midwives (SM) requiring continuity, the maths does not always equate. So an innovative model of clinical placement was required to allow the service to meet the requirements of the students whilst maintaining Midwife contentment, meeting student requirements and of course womens satisfaction with the quality of women centred care. So collaboration between the Health service and the University, a unique model of SM placement was established. We examined the needs of all and created a model of group practice. And our Midwifery Student Group Practice was created. The model that was shaped combined the requirements of the continuity component of the University curriculum and moulded a clinical practice the SM were seeking. After a struggle of learning the benefits of continuity of care and not being able to practice such models in their allocated clinical environment, the SM group practice allowed for the SM to provide a model of care they desired, take the pressure off the health service and provide the community with a continuity model of care previously not offered. The group practice model set up with the SM was designed with 2 small groups of students who each took on their group of women and shared the university requirements of 30 continuity women. The SM placement has been restructured from each student requiring 30 women each over three years through fragmented care, to each group now offering care to 90 women over three years through a model of group midwifery care. The students are: supervised in the antenatal clinic by both University Clinical Facilitator and hospital Midwives, supported by Birthing Midwives when their women labour and also provide postnatal care.