Midwifery Educator Bootcamps Boost Confidence and Skills in India
Five-day hands-on bootcamps upskill midwifery educators in three states across India, with plans to scale in 2024.
India has significantly reduced neonatal and maternal mortality rates in the past few decades. This is in part due to the National Health Mission, which sought to increase access to institutional births, where women and babies have been cared for by medical professionals during labour. However, some hospital settings have become unnecessarily overwhelmed, as 85% of all births do not require any specialized obstetric intervention, and so a focus is now on promoting midwifery-led care.
As part of the Midwifery Initiative Strengthening in India (a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded program being implemented by Jhpiego) a series of five-day midwifery bootcamps were hosted through June and July 2023 by a global team of midwifery experts with the aim of upskilling midwifery educators from across the country.
Over three consecutive weeks, experts from across the world, including the UK, Canada and Africa, alongside Rashmi Aradhya and Swati Sethi (members of Laerdal Global Health’s India team) conducted the bootcamps in three different states: Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
The team facilitated the sessions for three targeted National Midwifery Training Institutes (NMTI), reaching over 40 midwife educators.
The bootcamps had a comprehensive program, including topics such as:
- understanding important learning pedagogy
- an introduction to simulation and hands-on simulation practice
- the practice of debriefing
- how to effectively use case studies and scenarios to develop competence and confidence in a clinical setting
- evaluating utilizing Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE)
- decision making
- conflict resolution training
Laerdal Global Health’s Director of Impact and Healthcare Education in India, Rashmi Aradhya, says: “We were asked by our partners at Jhpiego to support on these intensive 5-day workshops, to help develop the skills needed for midwifery educators here in India. Using what we know about the Circle of Learning and the value of simulation-based training we were able to facilitate lots of hands-on practice for the midwives who attended. This now means there are 40 more midwife educators in India with the ability to effectively train others to carry out important clinical skills, improving the quality of care and contributing to saving more lives.”
We were delighted to see in the post-workshop feedback that 90% of participants felt that all of the training they received across the 5 days would be helpful in their work
There are plans to run the bootcamps again in 2024, training a further estimated 60 midwifery educators in two further NMTI’s. This will mean many more educators who are able to integrate their improved understanding of midwifery education and simulation into their own teaching, strengthening midwifery care and improving outcomes for mothers and babies across India.
Find out more about Jhpiego’s work in India.