Midwifery

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Background and Rationale

Midwifery training program has been started in Ethiopia at Asmara Nursing school as a specialty training of Nurses after completing their nursing education long time ago, and then at Gondar Public Health College of Medicine and Health Sciences as advanced diploma for few number of nurses with some years of work experience. Latter, direct generic diploma midwifery trainings were established at Gondar, Harare and Hawassa Health science colleges. The first Midwifery School that had provided full-fledged midwifery training was opened at Gondar University as a post-basic training program by the Ministry of Health in 2004 GC, and later expanded to other colleges and Universities.

In a response of recognition of the value of education for socioeconomic development of the country, the Government of Ethiopia has opened several higher learning institutions over the last decade. In view of this, there is global consensus to address in a holistic approach to the issue of maternal and child health problems. The 2005 World Health Report emphasized that making every mother and child count identified midwives and others with midwifery skills as essential human resource in health systems to reach the millennium development goals number 4 and 5.

The 2006 World Health Report identified 57 countries including Ethiopia as having severe health work force crisis making high coverage with essential health interventions including those necessary to meet health related millennium development goals. In the case of Ethiopia, the shortage was more critical for midwives, medical doctors, and anesthesia professionals. Additionally, graduates from medical institutions were not community oriented, in such a way that could identify and manage community high priority problems.

In order to address the severe shortage and skill gaps of Midwifery graduates, the Government of Ethiopia has scaled up midwifery education by expanding number of medical schools and annual student enrollment. Despite the significant step made to date, the midwife to population ratio continues to lag far behind the WHO benchmark of 1in10,000 warranting further scale-up of midwifery training. Furthermore, the quality of Midwifery graduates from training institutions lack the quality in which the country demands which makes them to deliver the necessary services quality as per the standards to the community.

In keeping with its mission to provide quality education in the country, FMOH wanted to develop a groundbreaking, competency based, community sensitive curriculum for undergraduate midwifery education that will produce midwives with community sensitive, critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Curriculum model

The curriculum model is competency (outcomes)-based with three cardinal features. Firstly, clear, measurable and observable learning outcomes are stated at program, module and rotation levels considering learning domains (knowledge, skill and attitude) and learning hierarchy suitable for higher order learning requiring application and problem solving.

Secondly, appropriate and experiential teaching and learning strategies that are aligned with defined learning outcomes are selected to maximize attainment of the desired competencies by all students. Thirdly, assessment methods that are authentic and require students to perform the tasks defined by the learning outcomes are suggested. To the extent possible, there is constructive alignment among learning outcomes, teaching and learning strategies and assessment methods within the framework of the SPICES Model.

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