Relationship between midwifery educators' quality of life and students' clinical training quality

Clinical education is a fundamental component of midwifery training that enables students to apply theoretical knowledge in real clinical environments. However, several challenges such as the dispersion of internships across departments, large student-to-instructor ratios, limited instructor accessibility, poor coordination between theoretical and clinical education, and stressful clinical conditions can reduce its effectiveness. Since educators' personal well-being may influence their teaching performance, this study aimed to examine the relationship between the quality of life of midwifery educators and the quality of clinical education of midwifery students in Fars Province, Iran.

Before conducting this cross-sectional descriptive-analytical study, a brief search of domestic and international databases (SID, Magiran, Google Scholar, Scopus, PubMed, and Web of Science) was performed using the keywords "quality of life of educators", "quality of clinical education", and "midwifery", which revealed no previous research directly addressing this relationship. The study was therefore designed to fill this gap. Participants included 94 midwifery educators and 181 final-year midwifery students from seven universities in Fars Province. Data were collected using three instruments: a demographic questionnaire, the SF-36 Quality of Life Questionnaire (completed by educators), and the Clinical Education Status Questionnaire (completed by students). Data were analyzed with SPSS version 24 using descriptive statistics and Spearman's correlation test due to non-normal data distribution.

The mean total quality-of-life score of educators was 70.03 ± 13.4, and the mean clinical education quality score of students was 96.98 ± 10.2. A significant positive correlation was found between educators' quality of life and students' clinical education quality at the institutional level (r = 0.219, p = 0.042), indicating an association between educator well-being and students' perceptions of clinical education within the same universities, indicating that better educator well-being was associated with higher perceived educational quality. Additionally, students' age was inversely correlated with their perception of clinical education quality (r = - 0.259, p = 0.001). Among the eight dimensions of quality of life, physical performance was the strongest predictor of clinical education quality (β = 0.807, p < 0.01).

The findings indicate that midwifery educators' quality of life is positively associated with the quality of clinical education perceived by students within the same institutional settings. Enhancing the physical and psychological well-being of educators may therefore improve the overall effectiveness of midwifery training programs and lead to higher-quality clinical education.