Abstract
Background: The Australian Midwifery Standards Assessment Tool (AMSAT) was developed against the Competency Standards for the Midwife in 2017 to enable consistent assessment of midwifery student performance in practice-based settings. The AMSAT requires revision and re-validation as the competency standards have now been superseded by the Midwife Standards for Practice 2018. Objective: This research revised and validated the AMSAT to assess performance of midwifery students against the Midwife Standards for Practice 2018 and assessed its sensitivity. Design: A mixed-methods approach was used in a two-phase process. Phase one involved the re-wording of the AMSAT and behavioural cue statements in an iterative participatory process with midwifery academics, assessors and students. The tool was field-tested in different assessment environments in phase two. Completed assessment forms were statistically analyzed, whilst assessor surveys were analysed using descriptive statistics and qualitative content analysis. Findings: Analysis of AMSAT (n = 255) indicates the tool as: internally reliable (Cronbach alpha > .9); valid (eigenvalue of 16.6 explaining 67% of variance); and sensitive (score analysis indicating increased levels of proficiency with progressive student experience). Analysis of surveys (n = 108) found acceptance of the tool for the purpose of summative and formative assessment, and in the provision of feedback to midwifery students on their performance. Conclusion: This study demonstrates that the re-developed AMSAT is a valid, reliable and acceptable tool to assess midwifery students’ performance against the Australian Midwife Standards for Practice This user-friendly tool can be used to standardize midwifery student assessment in Australia and enable continued benchmarking across education programs.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 135-144 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Women and Birth |
Volume | 33 |
Issue number | 2 |
Early online date | 6 Aug 2019 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Mar 2020 |
Bibliographical note
This author accepted manuscript is made available following 12 month embargo from date of publication (Sept 2019) in accordance with the publisher’s archiving policy.© 2019 Elsevier. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Keywords
- Clinical assessment
- Competence
- Midwifery education
- Practice-based learning
- Professional standards
- Validation