Reflections on a peer-participatory research approach to understand the experiences of student midwives at a UK university who identify as Black, Asian, or from a minoritized ethnicity.

Description

The focus of this oral presentation will be on the link between a peer participatory approach to research and engaging with inclusivity and how the two can support each other. Furthermore, this approach provides a case study for how to realise Domain 5 of the 2019 Standards of Proficiency for midwives creating a tangible link between the disciplines of education and research.
Who is the ‘seldom heard voice’? – The experiences of BAME student midwives are missing from the literature; the need to hear from them is urgent given that evidence acknowledges inequalities to progression and achievement for BAME students in Higher Education as well as barriers for promotion of BAME staff within the NHS. This was the starting point for our project.
How were we ‘inclusive’? – The ‘inclusivity’ is twofold: firstly on a local level by working in partnership with a student midwife who identified as BAME we were able to produce research ‘by and for’ BAME student midwives giving voice to their experiences; secondly, at a macro level the project aims to effect ‘inclusivity’ in the political sense of improving equal access to opportunities and progression through the wider dissemination of our findings.
What did we do: A student midwife was supported to co-produce a semi-structured interview schedule, conduct interviews, transcribe and anonymise them and then collaborated on the thematic analysis;
Main outcomes: This peer-participatory approach acts as a case study with many positive outcomes: It mitigated the risk of not hearing open and honest accounts from BAME students reluctant to share them with authority figures from an all-White teaching body; It supported a student tom make links between Domain 5 of the 2019 NMC Standards of proficiency for midwives, university assessments and

Period	23 Mar 2022
Event title	Royal College of Midwives Research and Education Conference: Ensuring every voice is heard: Promoting inclusivity in education, research, and midwifery care
Event type	Conference
Location	CoventryShow on map
Degree of Recognition	National