Assessment 1 – Reflective Portfolio

Type: Written assessment: ongoing reflective journal

Due date: 18:00 hrs AEST 4/06/2021 (week 12)

Weighting: 40%

Length: N/A. Each journal entry should be approximately 400 words however labour and birth reflections can be longer.

Unit Coordinator: Robyn Buis

Learning Outcomes Assessed:

1. Demonstrate safe and effective midwifery care at the level of a competent beginning midwife.

2. Reflect on clinical learning and midwifery practice.

3. Demonstrate midwifery competence based upon the Nursing and Midwifery Board Australia (NMBA) requirements.

Aim:

The aim of this assessment is to allow you to demonstrate reflective practice.

Reflective practice is a key element that contributes to the NMBA Midwife Standards for Practice. It is through reflective processes that both students and registered midwives can identify and explore diverse values, beliefs, learning needs and sociocultural structures.

Overview of Reflective Journal Writing

A reflective journal is a way of thinking in a critical and analytical way about your clinical experience. It involves looking at a situation, assessing what you have learnt from it, what you could have done differently, realising new approaches to your care and ultimately, how you felt about the whole experience. As a student midwife it shows how different aspects of your work interconnect and can be very useful for identifying gaps in knowledge and ethical dilemmas or situations that need further thought.

Understanding your feelings is a vital skill for reflective writing, and studying midwifery involves being exposed to many new situations - doing your first antenatal booking; helping a woman with breastfeeding support; witnessing a birth - which can bring new reactions to the surface. It's important to comprehend what you feel, why you feel that way and to then learn from it, as failing to reflect can lead to poor insight and therefore poor performance in practice (Hays & Gay, 2011).

Reflective writing is more personal than other kinds of academic writing and is an exploration of events not just a description of them.

Instructions

1. You are required to complete a reflective piece of writing for a minimum of 10 continuity of care cases, including each of the four (4) newly recruited women from term three (3).

2. By week 12 you need to have completed 10 comprehensive reflective journals that include a minimum of:

- 4 antenatal visits

- labour & Birth/intrapartum care of at least 6 women

- 2 postnatal visits

- You must have spent a minimum of 10 hours with each woman.

Please upload your minimum of 10 completed journals to the Bachelor of Midwifery (Graduate Entry) meta page

Reflective Journal Requirements

Refer to the provided Reflective Journal Template and the Two Reflective Journal examples.

Journal entries are your written reflections of face to face or telehealth episodes of care with the recruited Continuity of Care woman. Phone calls, emails, text messages or any other form of communication other than face to face contact or telehealth is not acceptable. *If you are experiencing COVID-19 restrictions in the clinical area and this impedes face to face contact please contact the unit coordinator to discuss your options well before the due date.

How to structure reflective writing

It can be useful to use a reflective model, or series of questions, which will help you look at the whole event from many different angles (Macdonald, 2011; Driscoll, 1994; Benner, 1984). The Driscoll model has a very simple 'what', 'so what' and 'now what' model, which is easy to remember and write up. There are three common reflective writing models that you may choose to follow when writing reflectively: Van Manen, Gibbs and Durgahee (Giminez, 2019). The models all involve thinking systematically about the phases of an activity, using headings including description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion and action plan. These theoretical frameworks provide a starting point for the critical skills that all student midwives should develop by the end of their educational program.

Example:

1. Description: (do not make this too long - refer to the provided template).

What is it? What happened? Why am I talking about it?

2. Interpretation: What is important and relevant? Look through your description and try to find words or phrases that require further exploration. Include the rationale for what was done or why it was done. Where there is controversy about what was done or found, provide the rationale and sources of evidence for both sides of the argument. How can it be explored and explained using contemporary theories?

3. Outcome: What have I learned from this? How will it influence my future work?

Above all, enjoy writing the journal - it is about you and your reflection and your development as a clinical midwife!

Literature and references

In this assessment you may use contemporary references (<5 years) to support your reflective writing. You may also use seminal scholarly literature where relevant. Suitable references include peer-reviewed journal articles as well as textbooks and credible websites. When sourcing information, consider the five elements of a quality reference: currency, authority, relevance, objectivity, and coverage. Grey literature sourced from the internet must be from reputable websites such as from government, university, or peak national bodies: for example, the Australian College of Midwives.

Requirements

• Each CoC woman must have their own individual journal in Word Doc. Format and be uploaded as an individual file to the Bachelor of Midwifery Meta page.

• Each journal entry in the portfolio must adhere to the template provided on the MDWF13006 Moodle page.

• Each CoC woman must be de-identified within the journal.

• Use a conventional and legible size 12 font, such as Times New Roman or Arial, with 1.5 line spacing and 2.54cm page margins (standard pre-set margin in Microsoft Word).

• Include page numbers on each page in a footer.

• You may write in the first-person perspective.

• Use formal academic language.

• Use the seventh edition American Psychological Association (APA) referencing style. The CQUniversity Academic Learning Centre has an online APA Referencing Style Guide.

• The word count is considered from the first word of the introduction to the last word of the conclusion. The word count excludes the reference list but includes in-text references and direct quotations.

Resources

• You must use unit provided journal templates and other credible sources of information (e.g. journal articles, books) to reference your discussion. The quality and credibility of your sources are important.

• We recommend that you access your discipline specific library guide: Midwifery Resource Guide

• We recommend you use EndNote to manage your citations and reference list. More information on how to use EndNote is available at the CQUniversity Library website.

• For information on academic communication please go to the Academic Learning Centre Moodle site. The Academic Communication section has many helpful resources including information for students with English as a second language.

• Submit a draft before the due date to review your Turnitin Similarity Score before making a final submission. Instructions are available here.

Submission

Submit your assessment via the Bachelor of Midwifery Meta Moodle site in Microsoft Word format only.

Marking Criteria

Refer to the marking rubric on the Moodle site for more detail on how marks will be assigned.

References

Benner, P. (1984). From novice to expert. Menlo Park.

Driscoll, J. (1994). Reflective practice for practise. Sr Nurse, 14(1), 47-50.

Gimenez, J. (2019). Writing for Nursing and Midwifery Students: Springer Nature.

Hays, R., & Gay, S. (2011). Reflection or ‘pre-reflection’: what are we actually measuring in reflective practice? Medical Education, 45(2), 116-118. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2923.2010.03813.x

Macdonald, J., & Poniatowska, B. (2011). Designing the professional development of staff for teaching online: an OU (UK) case study. Distance Education, 32(1), 119-134. doi:10.1080/01587919.2011.565481

Assessment 2 – Coroners Case.

Type: Written assessment and Audio presentation.

Due date: 18:00 hrs 18/05/2021 (week 10)

Weighting: 60%

Length: 2000 words

Unit Coordinator: Robyn Buis

Learning Outcomes Assessed:

1. Demonstrate safe and effective midwifery care at the level of a competent beginning midwife.

2. Reflect on clinical learning and midwifery practice

Aim:

The aim of this assessment is to critically analyse and reflect upon a Coroner’s case report, then apply your midwifery knowledge to the case and provide alternative midwifery actions that are justified by the evidence. This assessment will provide you with an opportunity to disseminate your findings verbally.

Instructions:

In this assessment, you are required to examine a Coroner’s Report. This Report is from August 2020, pertaining to events from December 2012 and relates to the case of Baby C. Baby C and his mother were under the antenatal, intrapartum and postnatal care of maternity health services at a Queensland Health hospital, and, according to the facts before the coroner, Baby C died as a result of meconium aspiration syndrome and persistent pulmonary hypertension.

In this assessment you are asked to follow the pregnancy, intrapartum and postnatal journey provided in the report, examine what occurred, and perhaps most importantly, provide alternative midwifery actions that may have led to a different outcome. These actions may include multidisciplinary collaboration and communication, maternal and foetal assessment, provision of evidence based care, education, advocacy for the mother and foetus, and partner involvement.

As part of this assignment you are expected to review current (5 years) peer reviewed evidence, policy and guidelines on induction of labour and electronic fetal monitoring (EFM), identify the benefits, prohibitors and risk factors for both. It is also expected that you will identify early warning signs of maternal and foetal deterioration during pregnancy, labour and birth and postnatally and discuss clinical midwifery interventions to mitigate this.

Please follow the steps below to complete your assessment task:

Part 1: Written component.

1. Download the Coroner’s report.

2. Utilising a timeline of the labour/birth events and considering antenatal events, highlight the critical areas where you consider the maternity care was not evidence based. Identify critical incidents where effective communication and clinical midwifery intervention would have been appropriate. Outline what appropriate midwifery interventions would be at that critical point in the timeline and how you as a practising registered midwife would have intervened. You will need to support your argument with appropriate current evidence.

3. Utilising current (last 5 years) literature provide an overview of the appropriate use of induction of labour and electronic fetal monitoring (EFM). The discussion should include the benefits and risks relating to induction of labour and EFM. Include this information in your assessment piece.

Part 2 Audio component

1. Provide an audio recording of yourself undertaking a five-minute talk that could be used for education with colleagues at a Grand Round. Base your talk on this Coroner’s Report and the salient learnings from this for registered midwives.

2. Your talk should be approximately five minutes long but no longer than 10 minutes. It should include the timeline, what in your opinion went wrong and how to prevent a tragedy like Baby C’s death from re-occurring in the future, viewed from a midwifery perspective and using current evidence. In essence this is a summarisation of Part 1.

Tips and resources on how to upload your talk will be made available on your Moodle site and in an assignment guide. An audio exemplar is provided on the Moodle page.

Literature and references

In this assessment you are to use contemporary references (<5 years) to support your writing. You may also use seminal scholarly literature where relevant. Suitable references include peer-reviewed journal articles as well as textbooks and credible websites. When sourcing information, consider the five elements of a quality reference: currency, authority, relevance, objectivity, and coverage. Grey literature sourced from the internet must be from reputable websites such as from government, university, or peak national bodies: for example, the Australian College of Midwives.

Requirements

• Use a conventional and legible size 12 font, such as Times New Roman or Arial, with 1.5 line spacing and 2.54cm page margins (standard pre-set margin in Microsoft Word).

• Include page numbers on each page in a footer.

• You may write in the first-person perspective.

• Use formal academic language.

• Use the seventh edition American Psychological Association (APA) referencing style. The CQUniversity Academic Learning Centre has an online APA Referencing Style Guide.

• The word count is considered from the first word of the introduction to the last word of the conclusion. The word count excludes the reference list but includes in-text references and direct quotations.

Resources

• You may use unit materials provided and other credible sources of information (e.g. journal articles, books) to reference your argument. The quality and credibility of your sources are important.

• We recommend that you access your discipline specific library guide: Midwifery Resource Guide

• We recommend you use EndNote to manage your citations and reference list. More information on how to use EndNote is available at the CQUniversity Library website.

• For information on academic communication please go to the Academic Learning Centre Moodle site. The Academic Communication section has many helpful resources including information for students with English as a second language.

• Submit a draft before the due date to review your Turnitin Similarity Score before making a final submission. Instructions are available here.

Submission

Submit your assessment via the MDWF13006 Moodle site in Microsoft Word format only. Please submit your completed audio recording as a separate document to the assessment submission zone, therefore you will upload two files.

Marking Criteria

Refer to the marking rubric on the Moodle site for more detail on how marks will be assigned.

Assessment 3 – Clinical Practice Placement: End of Term Documents.

Type: Clinical Hours, Skills and Competency Assessment Tool.

Due date: 18:00 hrs 11/06/2021 (week 13)

Weighting: 0% - Pass/Fail

Unit Coordinator: Robyn Buis

Learning Outcomes Assessed:

1. Demonstrate safe and effective midwifery care at the level of a competent beginning midwife.

2. Reflect on clinical learning and midwifery practice.

3. Demonstrate midwifery competence based upon the Nursing and Midwifery Board Australia (NMBA) requirements.

Aim:

The aim of this assessment is to aid you in consolidating your midwifery knowledge and the application of theory to practice for ensuring safe and effective care is received by the women and infants in your care. This assessment aims to provide you with the opportunity to demonstrate competent midwifery clinical practice that meets the requirements of the NMBA Midwife Standards for Practice (2018).

Task Description:

Minimal clinical practice experience of 224 hours is required by the completion of this unit. This clinical experience will allow you to consolidate knowledge and skills acquired throughout the unit. You are required to meet the clinical requirements listed below and these requirements need to be documented within your Student Clinical Experience Record Book. Please note that successful completion of this unit is not merely completing requisite clinical hours and skills but also demonstrating midwifery novice competency based upon the NMBA requirements and professional behaviour as per relevant CQUniversity policies.

Please follow the steps below to complete your assessment task:

You are expected to work towards minimal clinical requirements which include:

1. Complete the four ‘Continuity of Care (CoC), experience women recruited in term 3. By week 13 you must have completed and submitted 10 comprehensive reflective journals that include a minimum of:

• 4 antenatal visits

• Labour & birth/intrapartum care of at least 6 women

• 2 postnatal visits

2. Complete the Term 4 Competency Performance Assessment

3. Complete 224 hours of clinical practice experience plus continuity of care hours (10-20 in total per woman recruited).

Submit the following completed documents:

• Bachelor of Midwifery (Graduate Entry) Record of Hours.

• Midwifery clinical hours running sheet.

• Term 4 Competency Assessment Tool.

• Record of CoCE sheet.

*As this is the completion of the entire course, in total, all students must have completed a grand total of a minimum of 896 clinical hours plus a minimum of 100 CoC hours and have been signed off as competent throughout the Term 4 CAT.

The required clinical experience will be reviewed by the midwifery educator/manager in conjunction with the unit coordinator.

Resources

• You must use the correct documents (as listed above) that are provided on the MDWF 13006 Moodle unit page.

Submission

All four documents, listed above - must be completely filled out with no mistakes, no white out, and correctly calculated hours, with all sections signed by the student and registered midwife assessor. All completed and correct documents must be legible and clearly scanned with a high resolution scanner. Clear, readable scanned copies will be emailed to Robyn Buis at r.buis@cqu.edu.au by the due date.

Marking Criteria

There is no marking rubric for this assessment as this is a Pass/Fail assessment.

This is a pass/fail assessment and as such no marking criteria are applied to this assessment.