Instructor’s Support in Clinical Setting from Midwifery Students’ Viewpoints

Introduction: Although mentorship is a supporting relationship assisting people to improve their profession, it is not obvious form students’ viewpoint what word, behavior or function of instructors is considered supportive.  This study intended to determine instances of instructor’s support in clinical settings from the midwifery students’ viewpoint. Methods: The data was collected through content analysis and descriptive analysis. To identify instances of instructor’s support, 30 midwifery students were asked to write about their personal clinical experience. A questionnaire was also administrated to 100 other students. To analyze the data in the second phase, SPSS software 19 was run. To demonstrate the frequency of acceptance for each supporting situation and probable disparities between groups, descriptive tests and Chi-square test were applied, respectively. Results: Three categories (emotional, instrumental and informational support) together with six clusters (respect, reinforcing self-confidence, independence, reducing tension, educational needs, and providing feedback) were emerged from 20 codes. Descriptive analysis detected that 80.66% of students regarded instructor’s emotional behavior, 70% instructor’s instrumental measures, and 41% instructor’s informational and feedback behaviors as supporting. Some instances of instructor’s support from students’ viewpoint were self-confidence (97%), not being blamed (87%), permission to repeat the procedure on the patient (87%), assigning value to the student’s performance (84%), giving permission to act without supervision after the first satisfactory move (78%). Conclusion: The participants considered emotional behavior and instrumental contribution of instructors more supporting than their function of providing information and feedback which requires the attention of the instructors and revision of their performance