Learning and Teaching in Clinical Settings: Expert Commentary from a Midwifery Perspective

A midwife works in partnership with childbearing women to give the necessary support, care, and advice during pregnancy, labor, and the postpartum period. Midwifery is a regulated and licensed profession, and educational programs leading to registration as a midwife are required to meet minimum standards. Midwifery care is provided in a variety of contexts with a broad range of models of care. There is extensive evidence that midwives are crucial to improving the health and well-being of women and their babies globally, not only in low- and middle-income countries, and that continuity of midwifery care is the optimal means to achieve this. Teaching and learning in clinical settings may occur in hospitals, health centers, or women’s own homes. This may occur in block placements, regular weekly placement, or through continuity of care experience models. Midwifery education can be enhanced through learner activities, such as participatory practices and enacting learner agency. Teaching considerations include the practice curricula and practice pedagogies. Timing, sequencing, and affordance to learning opportunities that enhance the capacity for continuity of education are paramount. Teaching practices that are beneficial include positive role models, awareness of cognitive overload and teaching tasks in parts where necessary, using strategies that build clinical reasoning capacity such as think aloud technique, and providing regular and supportive feedback and effective assessments. All of these are strategies to support learning and teaching in midwifery clinical settings.