The Effect of Implementing the Competency-Based Education Model on the Clinical Skills among Midwifery Students

From the past to the present, the traditional lecturing method has been the usual and preferred method for teaching, and instructors use learner-oriented methods such as group discussion less due to reasons such as being time-consuming and low-experienced in both groups of learners and professors in this regard.

The present study was conducted to compare the effect of implementing the competency-based education model on the clinical skills among midwifery students.

This study was semi-experimental; the samples consisted of 34 midwifery students randomly assigned to two experimental and control groups. The procedures of pelvic examination, Leopold maneuvers, and suturing were taught in the form of competency-based education during six 60-minute sessions for the experimental group, and the control group was trained according to the conventional method. The required information was collected by the triple skills checklist, and finally, the data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) test in SPSS software.

After the intervention, in the experimental and control groups, the pelvic examination skill scores were 38.00 ± 8.41 and 20.76 ± 7.91, the Leopold maneuvers scores were 35.40 ± 6.29 and 23.18 ± 6.73, and the suturing scores were reported as 30.71 ± 6.93 and 22.12 ± 9.58, respectively (P < 0.050). The results of the ANCOVA test showed that competency-based education affected learning the pelvic examination skill with an effect size of 0.893, suturing with an effect size of 0.644, and Leopold maneuvers with an effect size of 0.860.

Given that students’ skill needs are considered in detail in the competency-based model and are accompanied by continuous evaluation and feedback, they can affect clinical learning. Based on the obtained results, it is suggested that instructors and professors use the competency-based education method as a strategy in addition to the conventional method for teaching professional skills in midwifery.