‘Telling stories, hearing stories’: The value to midwifery students, Part 2

Abstract

This article reports on the findings of a narrative inquiry that aimed to explore the value that students place on birth storytelling, and the significant stories that they tell and hear during their midwifery programme. This is the second of two articles and focuses on whether storytelling is valued by students in developing their learning. Purposive sampling of two cohorts of final year midwifery students from one university in the south east of England in 2007 elicited five participants. Two focus groups enabled data collection and seven themes emerged from the data analysis: validating experiences; stories used as reflection; listening to other students' stories; retold stories; lecturers' humorous stories; not wanting to be judged by mentors when recounting stories; and opportunities for story-sharing. Storytelling appears to assist students to integrate and enhance their experiential learning, particularly on returning from practice placements into the classroom. The findings suggest storytelling is valued by students and does facilitate learning. This study can have implications for students, mentors, midwifery lecturers, others in higher education and for curriculum development.