Midwifery Educator Core Competencies

Overview

As the year 2015 comes nearer it is already obvious that in many countries the target for maternal mortality reduction – Millennium Development Goals (MDG) – will not be met. It is also clear that in spite of the major progress in MDG 4 on child mortality, newborn mortality is not declining at the same rate as child mortality after the first month of life. Both maternal and neonatal mortality need more attention: quality services for all women and babies during pregnancy, delivery and the postnatal period.

The demand for quality services continues unabated. The fertility decline is modest in most lowand lower middle-income countries and numbers of deliveries continue to grow. Many women still deliver at home with limited skilled attendance, because services are not accessible or are perceived to be of poor quality. New approaches such as incentives for women to deliver in health facilities and pay-for-performance of health workers are intended to increase coverage of deliveries by health institutions and increase the quality of services provided.

The foundation for quality services lies in having an adequate competent midwifery workforce. In many countries there are still critical shortages of midwives. Moreover, the training programmes are suboptimal. This is not only because of a dearth of training resources, but particularly because competent educators are lacking. The key to a competent workforce is education. Strong education institutions are needed to secure the numbers and quality of health workers as the performance of health care systems depends on the knowledge, skills and motivation of the people responsible for delivering services.

This publication focuses on midwifery educator competencies, which is a critical but neglected component of education. One survey suggested that only 6.6% of the present teaching staff in developing countries have formal preparation in education. The quality of educators is an important factor affecting the quality of graduates from midwifery programmes. Well-prepared midwifery educators can provide quality education within an enabling environment including adequate resources, policy and governance. Adopting these core competencies can provide a strong basis for a significant improvement in the quality of care for pregnant women, mothers and newborns. The core competencies can be used to develop innovative curriculum contents and teaching approaches, with strong effective links between theory and midwifery practice.