The Journal of Medical Education and Development

Introduction : Clinical education is considered as the heart of medicine and health care due to the importance of training expert manpower. To achieve this goal, education quality should be promoted, this requiring its continuous evaluation. In this regard, application of appropriate educational strategies by competent clinical trainers or instructors leads to an improvement in the clinical education outcomes. This study was carried out to assess the learning method of clinical skills and its barriers from the viewpoint of students of midwifery.

Materials & Methods : This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted on 140 employed BS midwives in Yazd Province who had a 6-month working experience using a questionnaire including demographic information and items on the common clinical skills grading, skills learning methods, and barriers to clinical learning. Having collected the questionnaires, the data were analyzed using SPSS.

Results : The findings of the study revealed that the rate of clinical skills was at a good level for most of the subjects (56.5%), at an intermediate level for 30.7 %, and at a low level for 12.8% of the subjects. The correlation coefficients were statistically significant between subjects' level of clinical skills and age, department, and clinical experience. In studying the learning methods of clinical skills, 46.6% of learning was attributed to trainers, while 69.3% of the learning barriers were attributed to lack of sufficient cases during education, and 68.6% were attributed to insufficient practical training.

Conclusion : Although the graduates had an acceptable level of clinical skills, the need for improving clinical education and administering continuous education programs for controlling and warranting care quality was markedly obvious. As the subjects reported, learning was attributed to trainers, while learning barriers were attributed to lack of sufficient cases during training, and insufficient practical training. Thus, through balancing student uptake, society needs, and the present educational means, we hope to see the promotion of care quality some day.