MDWF12004 - Critical Inquiry and Midwifery Practice

General Information

Unit Synopsis

Informed practice is fundamental to safe practice in midwifery care and ethical decision making. Informed practice requires you to review evidence for its relevance to best practice. In this unit, you will apply skills to search for evidence, critically review contemporary research and other evidence, and critique current policies relevant to midwifery practice.

Details

Level Undergraduate
Unit Level 2
Credit Points 6
Student Contribution Band SCA Band 1
Fraction of Full-Time Student Load 0.125
Pre-requisites or Co-requisites

Pre-Requisites:

MDWF12002 Foundations of Midwifery 1, MDWF12003 Midwifery Practice 1, and MDWF12007 Professional Midwifery Practice: Legal and Ethical Frameworks

Important note: Students enrolled in a subsequent unit who failed their pre-requisite unit, should drop the subsequent unit before the census date or within 10 working days of Fail grade notification. Students who do not drop the unit in this timeframe cannot later drop the unit without academic and financial liability. See details in the Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework).

Class Timetable View Unit Timetable
Residential School No Residential School

Unit Availabilities from Term 1 - 2025

Term 2 - 2025 Profile
Online

Attendance Requirements

All on-campus students are expected to attend scheduled classes - in some units, these classes are identified as a mandatory (pass/fail) component and attendance is compulsory. International students, on a student visa, must maintain a full time study load and meet both attendance and academic progress requirements in each study period (satisfactory attendance for International students is defined as maintaining at least an 80% attendance record).

Assessment Overview

Recommended Student Time Commitment

Each 6-credit Undergraduate unit at CQUniversity requires an overall time commitment of an average of 12.5 hours of study per week, making a total of 150 hours for the unit.

Assessment Tasks

Assessment Task Weighting
1. Case Study 50%
2. Report 50%

This is a graded unit: your overall grade will be calculated from the marks or grades for each assessment task, based on the relative weightings shown in the table above. You must obtain an overall mark for the unit of at least 50%, or an overall grade of ‘pass’ in order to pass the unit. If any ‘pass/fail’ tasks are shown in the table above they must also be completed successfully (‘pass’ grade). You must also meet any minimum mark requirements specified for a particular assessment task, as detailed in the ‘assessment task’ section (note that in some instances, the minimum mark for a task may be greater than 50%).

Consult the University's Grades and Results Policy for more details of interim results and final grades

Past Exams

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Previous Feedback

Term 2 - 2024 : The overall satisfaction for students in the last offering of this course was 100.00% (`Agree` and `Strongly Agree` responses), based on a 3.45% response rate.

Feedback, Recommendations and Responses

Every unit is reviewed for enhancement each year. At the most recent review, the following staff and student feedback items were identified and recommendations were made.

Source: SUTE
Feedback
It felt very repetitious. The first assessment was not useful at all. It was everything we already automatically do when researching. It just repeated what we already knew about how to research.
Recommendation
Assessments are designed to scaffold novice knowledge and guide students towards building robust research skills. This feedback will be incorporated into future assessments.
Action Taken
In this offering, assessment tasks were refined to enhance clarity and guide students towards the individual steps of constructing a short literature review to enhance differentiation from usual routine written assessment writing. Whilst the second assessment was scaffolded to the first assessment, students were directed to utilise the research skills acquired in assessment one and apply them to assessment 2. This allowed them to refine their use of academic databases, for the purpose of engaging efficiently with scholarly literature to complete written assessments. It is hoped that this reduced the sense of repetition between the tasks.
Unit learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:

  1. Identify the types of evidence that inform current safe, quality midwifery practice
  2. Critically analyse current evidence for translation into midwifery practice
  3. Evaluate the relevance of current research to inform ethical decision making in midwifery practice
  4. Analyse and critique current policy relevant to midwifery practice.

The draft Australian Nursing and Midwifery Accreditation Standards (ANMAC) Midwifery Education Standards (2020).

Standard 1 Safety of the public.

Standard 3 Program of study.

Standard 5 Student assessment.

The Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (NMBA) Midwife Standards for Practice (2018).

Standard 1: Promotes evidence-based maternal health and wellbeing.

Standard 4: Undertakes comprehensive assessments.

Standard 5: Develops plans for midwifery practice.

Standard 6: Provides safe and quality midwifery practice.

Standard 7: Evaluates outcomes to improve midwifery practice.

NMBA Code of Conduct for Midwives (2018).

Principle 2: Woman-centred practice.

Principle 6: Research in health.

The International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) International Code of Ethics for Midwives (2014).

Practice of midwifery.

The professional responsibilities of Midwives.

Advancement of midwifery knowledge and practice.

National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards (2017).

Communicating for Safety.

Clinical Governance Standard.

Preventing and Controlling Healthcare-Associated Infection Standard.

Medication Safety Standard.

Comprehensive Care Standard.

Alignment of Assessment Tasks to Learning Outcomes
Assessment Tasks Learning Outcomes
1 2 3 4
1 - Case Study • •
2 - Report • • • •
Alignment of Graduate Attributes to Learning Outcomes
• Introductory Level
• Intermediate Level
• Graduate Level
Graduate Attributes Learning Outcomes
1 2 3 4
1 - Communication • • • •
2 - Problem Solving • • •
3 - Critical Thinking • • • •
4 - Information Literacy • • • •
5 - Team Work •
6 - Information Technology Competence •
7 - Cross Cultural Competence •
8 - Ethical practice • •
9 - Social Innovation •
Alignment of Assessment Tasks to Graduate Attributes
• Introductory Level
• Intermediate Level
• Graduate Level
Assessment Tasks Graduate Attributes
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 - Case Study • • • • • • • • •
2 - Report • • • • • • • •