Sharing experiences: using AMSAT to assess midwifery student performance

In 2017, the Australian Midwifery Standards Assessment Tool (AMSAT), the first national valid, reliable and acceptable midwifery assessment tool was developed and published. This assessment tool was designed to enable consistent assessment of midwifery student to meet the Australian competency standards for the midwife, which were originally released in 2006. Approximately six universities began using AMSAT. In 2018 the new Midwife standards for practice were released and AMSAT has been revised and validated. There has been great interest nationally in the new AMSAT, with more than 12 universities planning to use it in 2019 and beyond.

This workshop will enable participants to discuss the use of the AMSAT tool, and share ways of implementing it in practice. Importantly, the AMSAT and associated behavioural cues are based on the minimum standards of practice. It is therefore timely to have critical conversations about setting standards and assisting learners to achieve higher than minimum standards. In particularly, we will share examples that can help supervisors and assessors elevate midwifery students to the highest levels of performance.

The development and validation of the revised AMSAT is an important step for the profession to assist consistency in student assessment, and benchmarking across the country to meet the requirements of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Accreditation Council and Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency requirements. Teaching effective use of the tool and assessment processes to enhance learning is an important step in achieving consistency, benchmarking capacity and high quality graduates.