Abstract
ABSTRACTBackground: Many countries are responding to the global shortage of midwives by increasing the student intake to their midwifery schools. At the same time, attention must be paid to the quality of education being provided, so that quality of midwifery care can be assured. Methods of assuring quality of education include accreditation schemes, but capacity to implement such schemes is weak in many countries.Objective: This paper describes the process of developing and pilot testing the International Confederation of Midwives’ Midwifery Education Accreditation Programme (ICM MEAP), based on global standards for midwifery education, and discusses the potential contribution it can make to building capacity and improving quality of care for mothers and their newborns.Methods: A review of relevant global, regional and national standards and tools informed the development of a set of assessment criteria (which was validated during an international consultation exercise) and a process for applying these criteria to midwifery schools. The process was pilot tested in two countries: Comoros and Trinidad and Tobago.Results: The assessment criteria and accreditation process were found to be appropriate in both country contexts, but both were refined after the pilot to make them more user-friendly.Conclusion: The ICM MEAP has the potential to contribute to improving health outcomes for women and newborns by building institutional capacity for the provision of high-quality midwifery education and thus improved quality of midwifery care, via improved accountability for the quality of midwifery education.
Highlights
Many countries are responding to the global shortage of midwives by increasing the student intake to their midwifery schools
The aim of this paper is to describe the process of developing the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) Midwifery Education Accreditation Programme (MEAP), how it works, and the experience of applying it in the two pilot countries, and in the light of this experience, to consider its potential for helping to build capacity for high-quality midwifery education in low- and middle-income countries
Assessment of institutional performance against ICM MEAP criteria means that midwifery education providers and stakeholders (e.g. Ministry of Health) can be very clear about their strengths and weaknesses, and what they need to do in order to provide the highest-quality midwifery education
Summary
Many countries are responding to the global shortage of midwives by increasing the student intake to their midwifery schools. Attention must be paid to the quality of education being provided, so that quality of midwifery care can be assured. Many countries have responded to the shortage of midwives by increasing the number of midwife education programmes and available student places [2]. Increasing the size of the midwifery workforce only addresses the availability of midwives. It is necessary to take into account the quality of care that they are competent and enabled to provide, otherwise increased availability may not result in improved health outcomes [3,4]. The quality of midwifery education varies both within and between countries [6,7], and poor quality of education has been identified as a barrier to highquality midwifery care [8]
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