An Assessment of the Learning Method of Clinical Skills from the Viewpoint of Midwifery Graduates

The promotion of clinical education quality requires the continuous investigation of the current status, identifying its strong potentialities, and modifying its weak points. The purpose of this study was to determine the clinical education status at Tehran University of Medical Sciences form the viewpoint of students of nursing and midwifery. In this descriptive study, all the senior BS students of nursing and senior post diploma students of midwifery studying in the last semester including a total of 250 subjects were asked to fill in a self-administered 36-item questionnaire. The data were analyzed by SPSS using frequency distribution. The most important strong points of clinical education were: instructor's proper treatment and approach toward students, punctual attendance of trainers, instructors and students, observing the prerequisites for practical training, following the stages of clinical education, instructor's complete support of students, and sufficient supervision on the course of clinical education, respectively. The most significant weak points of clinical education included: lack of use of teaching aids in the clinical environment, lack of sufficient facilities, lack of instructors clinical evaluation by students, lack of harmony between theoretical and practical courses. Though some aspects of clinical education are in an excellent state, reinforcing and improving the strong positive points and removing the weak points can function as an effective step in promoting the quality of clinical education. Through frequent assessments of the clinical setting and comparing the present status to the past, the strong and weak points can be determined and enumerated.