At Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust we support and facilitate students across many disciplines. In recognition of the disruption to clinical practice for pre-registrant students as a PEF team (Practice Education Facilitators) we identified the need for further support to enhance confidence and clinical ability.

Our pre-registration MDT student study sessions are attended by Student midwives, student nurses, Student ODP’s, Trainee Nurse Associates and medical students  with attendance ranges from 10-25+ per session. The aims of the sessions are to be student focused and the subject matter to reflect the needs of the learner- there is no monthly agenda, students have the opportunity to contact us with their thoughts for subject or assessments and discussions may present a particular theme- we aim to support any scenario.

Some examples feedback from students include:

“Extremely student focused, I do not feel judged if I do not know anything”. “Safe environment to share experiences”. “Very student orientated and relevant to my practice”. “Helped develop my confidence and understanding”. “Very friendly and relaxed environment- helped me feel confident to practice my skills”. “Amazing to be able to work with other students and build relationships, students teaching other students help consolidate our knowledge”

As well as the students feeling the ability to apply clinical knowledge there is an over arching theme of developing confidence to speak up-

“If senior people to myself, did something I was unhappy with or I felt it was inappropriate I feel I would have more confidence respectfully asking why!”. “I feel I would have a voice to challenge poor practice”. “You are empowering us as students to use our voices – thank you”

The sessions are helping to develop excellent working relationships across the multi-disciplinary team encouraging effective communication, confidence to speak up, and promoting safe practice through instilling this level of working at the early stage of their careers. The opportunity for shared learning is invaluable and we are seeing this reflected within the clinical areas as students are supporting each other in practice.

We have covered subjects such as Post-Partum Haemorrhage, SBARs and situational awareness, Dignity and Human factors, Tissue viability, scrubbing for theatre, fetal monitoring, to name just a few, there have also been sessions to practice clinical skills such as fetal auscultation, abdominal palpation, speculums, Amniotic rupture of membranes plus many more!

The sessions would not be possible without the fantastic support from colleagues willing to contribute and support these sessions, it is exciting to see what the next 12 months will bring!

“Students get to teach which helps us learn and encourages questions- this is helping build future multidisciplinary teams”.