Exploring the Resilience of Student Midwives
This project is an exploratory study into the lived experiences of midwifery students being resilient whilst studying on a professional health programme.
The working definition of resilience in this project is the effective use of internal and external resources to facilitate the individual to cope with challenging situations. Supporting funding has been received from a Canterbury Christ Church University Research Award for Early Career Researchers.
It is recognised that the shortage of midwives continues to be a challenge for the profession (House of Commons, 2014). Therefore, ensuing students qualify and practice is one solution to address this situation, consequently playing a part in assuring that women and their families have access to safe, quality care (RCM, 2016). However, for students on midwifery programmes the experience of studying is not without its own unique challenges (Rogers 2010). Students experience high levels of stress and need resilience to cope with the competing demands of their programme, thereby completing their studies (Green and Baird, 2009).
Whilst retention is monitored by higher education institutions, much of the data tends to concentrate on actual numbers of students and there is limited information on the experiences that lead to both attrition and retention (Health Education England, 2014). Certainly a search of the literature indicates a dearth of empirical research that has explored this concept with healthcare students studying on a professional programme. Hence, this research aims to understand the factors which help midwifery students to cope with their programme of study.
Therefore, in order to ascertain midwifery students’ perceptions and experiences of being resilient, a sample of final year pre-qualification midwifery students has been accessed. Data has been gathered using focus groups with a topic guide to give students a voice within their own frames of reference, whilst ensuring the data collected helps to illuminate the experiences of students within the context of resilience.
The data collected has been analysed using a thematic approach to identify emerging themes and currently these are undergoing respondent validation, before finalising the conceptual themes.