Project 1

Title: Nurse and Midwife Educators’ Experiences of  Translating Teaching Methodology Knowledge into Practice

 

Authors:

  • Jean Pierre Ndayisenga
  • Marilyn Evans
  • Yolanda Babenko-Mould
  • Madeleine Mukeshimana

 

Electronic Link: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/6296

Aim and objectives: Nurse and midwife educators play a vital role in nursing and midwifery students’ development post-graduation by enabling them to gain essential competencies in perinatal and neonatal care. In 2017, to enhance the quality of pre-service education of nurses and midwives in Rwanda, the Training, Support, and Access Model (TSAM) for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) project funded continuous professional development (CPD) training workshops about teaching methodologies for nurse and midwife educators from the six main programs of nursing and midwifery education around the country. The study’s aim was to explore nurse and midwife educators’ experiences of translating the knowledge and skills acquired from the workshops about teaching methodologies into their teaching practice.

Methodology: A qualitative descriptive design was used. A purposive sample of 15 educators from six schools participated in semi-structured individual interviews.  Inductive content analysis was used for generating themes.

Results: Five themes emerged: enhanced competencies about teaching practices, application of knowledge and skills gained into classroom and clinical teaching, collaboration and teamworking, facilitators and challenges to knowledge translation and skills into practice, and indirect outcomes to maternal and child health care.

Discussion and recommendations:  Although educators’ knowledge, skills, and confidence in teaching practices increased after participation in CPD, application of new skills was often hampered by insufficient resources and heavy workloads. The results support ongoing CPD programs for nurse and midwife educators to increase their competencies around classrooms and clinical teaching practices and create positive teaching and learning outcomes for nursing and midwifery students. The findings of this study indicated that the application of competencies acquired from CPD workshops into teaching practices will results to improved maternal and child health care in Rwanda.

 

Keywords: Teaching methodologies, nurse or midwife educator or faculty, continuous professional development, nursing or midwifery education, knowledge translation, developing countries, and Rwanda