Evaluation of an educational programme in Ege University, Turkey: medical student's home visits with midwife preceptors

Abstract

Objective: to evaluate the efficiency of the midwife preceptors in teaching comprehensive health care for women and their families through exploring how they perceive their roles as educators and from the perspectives of medical students; to assess the number of educational goals achieved.

Design: for midwives, a quantitative method was used for pre- and post-evaluation of a 'Medical Students' Home Visits with Midwife Preceptors' course. Focus-group interviews were used to gather qualitative data. Students were evaluated after undertaking home visits with the midwives.

Setting: urban health centres in Western Turkey and Ege University Faculty of Medicine.

Participants: a sample of four clusters of second year medical students (130 out of 284) and all midwives (n=32) linked with the health centres participated in the programme.

Findings: in general, both the midwives and the medical students found the programme useful. Students declared that they achieved their learning objectives and midwives stated that they had contributed to this achievement. Scores of eight of the 20 learning objectives significantly increased in the midwives' post-test evaluation. Midwives and students valued the effective communication they had with each other. All midwives participated in focus-group interviews, and reported that the course before the home visits was useful to them. Nearly all of the midwives suggested that the home visits course should be longer, repeated, or both. It was difficult to organise home visits for all of the medical students, and access to some households to enable students to gain training experience was refused.

Conclusions: this programme encouraged the medical students to adopt broad public health approaches in assessing the health needs of defined communities. It also increased their awareness of the importance of multi-professional teamwork and comprehensive health care for women and their families. At the same time, the programme improved the professional knowledge of midwives, and they were able to appreciate their roles and functions in primary health care, and enhance their self-esteem. The findings also indicated that this programme is an effective way of promoting multi-professional education in medical schools.