Supporting Midwifery Students During Clinical Practice: Results of a Systematic Scoping Review

BACKGROUND: Midwifery educators are highly concerned about the quality of clinical support offered to midwifery students during clinical placement. The unpreparedness of midwifery practitioners in mentorship roles and responsibilities affects the competence levels of the next-generation midwives being produced. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this paper is to highlight various clinical support interventions to support midwifery students globally and propose a framework to guide mentorship training in South Africa. METHODS: This paper adopts a mixed methodology approach guided by the Arksey and O’Malley framework. Keywords such as midwifery students, clinical support, mentorship, preceptorship, and midwifery clinical practice were used during the literature search. The review included primary quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods design papers published between 2010 and 2020, and studies on clinical support interventions available to midwifery students during clinical placement. The search strategy followed a 3-stage system of title, abstract, and full-text screening using inclusion and exclusion criteria. All included papers were quality appraised with a mixed methods appraisal tool. Extracted data were analyzed and presented in themes following a thematic content analysis approach. RESULTS: The screening results attained 10 papers for data extraction. In total, 7 of the 10 (70%) studies implemented a mentorship training program, 2 (20%) used a training workshop, and 1 (10%) used an intervention guide to support midwifery students in clinical practice. Of these 10 papers, 5 were qualitative, 4 mixed methods, and 1 quantitative in approach. In total, 9 of the 10 (90%) studies were conducted in high-income countries with only 1 study done in Uganda but supported by the United Kingdom. The quality of included papers ranged between 50% and 100%, showing moderate to high appraisal results. Significant findings highlighted that the responsibility of mentorship is shared between key role players (midwifery practitioners, students, and educators) and thus a 3-fold approach to mentorship. Mentorship training and support are essential to strengthen the clinical support of midwifery students during placement. The main findings produced 2 main themes and 2 subthemes each. The main themes included strengthening partnerships and consultation; and providing mentor support through training. The 4 subthemes were: establishing stronger partnerships between nursing education institutions and clinical facilities; improving consultation between midwifery educators, practitioners, and students; the quality of clinical support depends on the training content; and the training duration and structure. Hence, the researchers proposed these subthemes in a framework to guide mentorship training. CONCLUSIONS: Mentorship training and support for midwifery practitioners will likely strengthen the quality of midwifery clinical support. A framework to guide mentorship training will encourage midwifery educators to develop and conduct mentorship training with ease. More studies using quantitative approaches in research and related to midwifery clinical support are required in African countries. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): RR2-10.2196/29707