Any OB clinical faculty? Help! (vent)

[beckinben, CNM]

I'm a relatively new clinical faculty in OB, and I'm looking for input from other instructors in the OB area on what your institution does.

Do you have students do any written preparation for clinical, and if so, what?

My situation is I'm working with a new course (classroom) faculty member, and she feels we should not ask students to do any preparation for clinical. I have in the past used a short worksheet (9-12 questions, mostly fill in the blank, half of which cover common medications) that they need to turn into me before clinical starts, so that I see they have some basic knowledge about patient care and medications before they hit the floors. I (with other clinical faculty at my institution) made this worksheet up after several incidents with students coming to clinical completely unprepared and unable to answer very, very simple questions about their plan of care for their assigned patient.

I don't see how this differs from the very extensive preparation that students in other clinicals at this school do (other than being much easier and shorter :chuckle ) but we're butting heads over it.

Any input for me?

Becki

[VickyRN, MSN, DNP, RN]

I used to conduct OB clinicals (L & D, postpartum) in an ADN program and yes, we required extensive preparation before the clinical experience. The rationale is simple and borne out by research: the more prepared the students are for the clinical experience, the more beneficial the learning experience will be for the student.