Australian Midwifery Standards Assessment Tool: A valid midwifery clinical practice assessment tool

Introduction: Currently in Australia, midwifery education programs have their own clinical assessment tools to evaluate students’ clinical performance. Assessment processes are required to ascertain that graduates meet the requisite professional competency standards. A common validated assessment tool can contribute to national consistency in midwifery graduate standards. Aim: This project aimed to enhance assessment through developing and validating a standard tool to assess midwifery student performance in workplace-based settings. Methods: An iterative process with 24 midwives across four universities was used to develop and refine the tool and behavioural cues. Four workshops where held with the refinement process from each iteration verified through email. The refinement process ensured that the language in the tool was relevant and meaningful to clinicians working with students, as well as for academics. Midwives who assess students in clinical practice scored student performance with the new AMSAT tool alongside existing tools. Feedback in the form of a brief survey explored whether the assessor found the AMSAT tool user-friendly. A total of 159 assessments were undertaken across the five universities. Results: Principal factor analysis extracted one factor, the competency of midwifery students, which accounted for the 73.9% of variance. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin value was 0.904 and the Bartlett’s test of sphericity was statistically significant (p < 0.000) which indicate the appropriateness of the selected analysing method. The Scree plot, Monte Carlo simulation and exploratory factor analysis using Mplus program all demonstrated one factor. The AMSAT instrument (with 24 items) revealed to be reliable with a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.987. The calculated Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for each of 4 domains also demonstrated a high internal consistency. The mean of AMSAT scores for second year students was higher than the first years, but did not reach significant signifi- cance, (p < 0.106). The mean of AMSAT scores of third year students was significantly higher from both first and second years (p < 000 and p < 008), respectively. Conclusion and implications: By fulfilling requirements of reliability, validity, educational effect, acceptability and feasibility this tool will serve as a robust instrument to demonstrate student achievement, to meet professional competency and educational quality frameworks