Perceptions of midwifery students, mentors, and supervisors on the use of clinical teaching portfolio in Rwanda

Abstract

Background and objective: The clinical teaching portfolio is a practical tool for integrating theory and practice towards the growth of midwifery students. Both paper-based portfolios (PBP) and electronic portfolios (EP) are known and recognized as tools that can assist midwifery educators to develop students’ analytical and critical thinking. Hence, midwives are required to maintain a professional portfolio to reflect their development of knowledge, skills, and attitude. The aim of this study was to explore the perceptions of midwifery students, mentors, and supervisors about the use of paper-based and electronic clinical teaching portfolios.Methods: A qualitative descriptive design was carried out with 20 participants including midwifery students, mentors, and supervisors. Using purposive sampling, participants were recruited from two selected clinical teaching hospitals. All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim by the research team members. Six steps of thematic analysis were followed during the inductive analysis of collected data. Results: Three themes emerged from data analyses which include clinical teaching and learning, encountering barriers in the use of the clinical teaching portfolio, and preference among the clinical teaching portfolio users.Conclusions: The findings of this study highlighted the importance of a clinical teaching portfolio in the promotion of midwifery clinical teaching. This study indicated that there is a need to respect the student-clinical instructor ratio and to equip the users with the required skills in order to fully benefit from the use of a clinical teaching portfolio.