Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Professional accountability for student midwives

2007; Volume: 15; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês

10.12968/bjom.2007.15.7.23796

2052-4307

Gwen Roughley,

Health Services Management and Policy

The recent press report in the Southern daily Echo (Hoskins, 2007) about the student midwife who gained false access to computer information at work and then falsified her EU directive records in order to qualify is both shocking and sad. No one but she can fully understand why she felt the need for deception in this way but I suspect there must have been underlying problems and perhaps failures within the system. While the midwifery profession as a whole is likely to feel only contempt for her actions, we must not lose sight of the immense pressure that student midwives are under in order to ‘get their numbers’ especially in the current climate where competition for jobs are at an all time high. This story led me to look at the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) website and check how student midwives are expected to behave and manage their own learning experiences.