An exploration and description of student midwives' experiences in offering continuous labour support to women/couples

Aim: to explore and describe the student midwife's experiences in offering continuous tabour support. Design: a qualitative research design was chosen. Each student midwife offered continuous tabour support to five women/couples and wrote narratives about each of these occasions. Written narratives from 11 student midwives were analysed using qualitative content analysis. Findings: when student midwives offer continuous tabour support to women/couples, they try to establish rapport. When this works, their presence, their sense of confidence and their ability to offer reassurance increase. If establishing rapport does not work, students experience a sense of powerlessness, a need for reassurance and a lack of confidence. Key conclusions: offering continuous tabour support to women and/or their partners made the students aware of the importance of establishing rapport, and it made them realise the impact that their mere presence in the room could have. The students had a need for reassurance which could hamper their efforts to establish rapport. Experiencing a lack of confidence made students focus more strongly on their clinical skills and on their perceived role as a student midwife. Implications for practice: this study can initiate discussions about how student midwives learn to be supportive, as well as about the role models that students encounter during their clinical training in Sweden. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.