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Using the Unfolding Case Study in Midwifery Education
Author(s) -
Carr Katherine Camacho
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of midwifery and women's health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.543
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1542-2011
pISSN - 1526-9523
DOI - 10.1111/jmwh.12293
Subject(s) - action (physics) , health care , psychological intervention , psychology , medical education , grasp , medicine , nursing , computer science , political science , physics , quantum mechanics , programming language , law
One of the challenges in teaching clinicians is helping health care provider students, including midwives, develop the critical thinking and clinical decision‐making skills needed for various situations encountered in practice. Health care provider students need to master the required core knowledge and skills but also need to assess, analyze, judge, decide on action, act, and evaluate their actions. Lecture‐heavy classroom teaching, which is usually delivered separately from clinical experiences in health care education, focuses on knowledge acquisition, often leaving knowledge application to trial and error. Case studies are commonly used by faculty with a problem‐based learning approach, which is more analytic but sometimes static. The unfolding case study presents students with a patient scenario that changes over time and allows for discussion; lecture points as needed; and decision making as the situation or condition changes, reflecting what happens in real‐life clinical practice. The use of the unfolding case study moves health care provider education from fact‐based lecturing to situation‐based discussion and decision making as a person's condition or situation changes. Use of the unfolding case facilitates collaborative learning, covers necessary content, and assists students to think beyond the facts and use their clinical imagination. Unfolding case studies require students to begin to grasp the nature of a clinical situation and adjust interventions as the clinical situation unfolds. Steps in developing and using an unfolding case study for midwifery students are presented, including 2 examples. This article is part of a special series of articles that address midwifery innovations in clinical practice, education, interprofessional collaboration, health policy, and global health.