This clinical placement unit is the second of four that provides you with midwifery clinical experience. You will have the opportunity to assess, plan, provide, and evaluate the physiological and psychosocial care of the woman experiencing complex factors. Complexities may arise during the antenatal, intrapartum, and postnatal period and include the fetus and neonate. You will provide care in collaboration and consultation with the intra and interprofessional team utilising the Australian College of Midwives 'National Midwifery Guidelines for Consultation and Referral'. The clinical practicum component of this unit will require you to complete a minimum of 224 hours in addition to Continuity of Care Experiences (COCE).

Every unit is reviewed for enhancement each year. At the most recent review, the following staff and student feedback items were identified and recommendations were made.

Feedback from SUTE

I find the amount of work involved in these incredibly time consuming and somewhat irrelevant to my practice. As an experienced RN we reflect daily on our practice as it is, having to write upwards of 70 reflective journals over the course of midwifery, and needing to research some aspect of the encounter with the COCE woman, 70 different topics in midwifery care is far too many. I personally believe it would be more beneficial for my midwifery practice and allow for a deeper understanding of multiple topics if just ONE reflective journal was written per woman after her continuity of care experience was complete. giving an overview of all the appointments, her labour and birth and her PN period, and then reflecting on the entire process of her care, would be more beneficial.

Assessment 1: Reflective Portfolio Continuity of Care models of care and woman centred care are essential components of midwifery but may be new concepts to Bachelor of Midwifery (postgraduate) students. They are asked to provide a reflective discussion of their learning development and personal and professional trajectory of their 10 Continuity of Care Experiences needed to meet Ahpra requirements for registration. Students are asked to recruit 3 Continuity of Care Experiences and complete 3 in term 2 comprising of approximately 17-20 portfolio entries of 400 words each. There is an awareness that developing their reflective portfolio can be time consuming and as such it is weighted at 60% of the total assessment marks. Students are provided with instructions on potential topics relevant to their Continuity of Care women and an exemplar of portfolio entries. This assessment and workload will be further reviewed by the midwifery team. Students will be made aware of the weighting and further strategies to support the assessment submitted in week 12 of the term. These include students deepening their knowledge and analysis of one topic rather than choosing different topics for each entry and writing up journal entries after each clinical experience rather than at the end of term.

Feedback from SUTE

As external/online students it can be somewhat difficult to organise the assessment due to different work, clinical practice, and home schedules. A group poster and groups based on clinical placement location rather than randomly may work better.

Students are provided with the topics and group allocation for the poster and presentation as soon as Moodle access is available at the start of term. This is to enable them time to meet and develop their assessment within their group of 3 or 4 students. In term 1, they are allocated to a group with their peers at the same clinical placement unit where possible. In term 2, they are allocated to work with a variety of students to share practices across clinical placement units. They are asked to develop their assessment through email and Zoom/Teams meetings. Future group allocation will partner students from nearby clinical placement units to ensure student-focused assessments.

Feedback from Feedback in student emails and recognition of errors in assessment submissions in SONIA

Students commented that they were confused as to the documents to upload in the Record of Hours assessment document submitted at the end of term

Wording within the Record of Hours online assessment documentation has been amended to ensure clarity and accuracy.