Recording practice: Lessons for students, mentors and teachers

All midwifery students must provide evidence of attending 40 women in labour and birth. The shortened midwifery programme at the University of Stirling's Highland Campus in Inverness, which completed in 2010, required this care to be logged by the student on a specifically designed intrapartum template which was signed by the student's mentor. This article presents an audit of the completed intrapartum templates of the care recorded for low- and high-risk women. A review of both individual and collective student experience identified that students may have no experience in specific areas such as non-directed pushing and physiological third stage. In this audit student midwives cared for many more high-risk women than low-risk women in labour. Therefore, midwife educators, students and mentors should examine in detail the experience of all students to highlight any apparent deficits in their skills in order to ensure they are prepared for contemporary midwifery practice.