Researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with 13 participants: 10 midwifery educators from three nursing and midwifery training institutions and teaching hospitals in northern Malawi, and three deans of nursing and midwifery faculties. Content analysis was then used to examine the interview data and identify emerging themes. These findings represent the experiences reported by the study’s participants rather than an estimate of how frequently each challenge occurs across Malawi or elsewhere in the country.

The abstract distinguishes three reported challenges—multiple roles, inadequate clinical teaching space and inadequate clinical supervision—from several reported facilitating conditions, including access to clinical and policy guidelines, good clinical preparation and cordial working relationships. The authors stated that tailored interventions are needed to support midwifery educators in clinical teaching settings and to help translate theory into practice more effectively in clinical areas. They said the findings have implications for midwifery education and practice and could inform policy and practice changes aimed at improving midwifery education in Malawi and similar contexts.

The supplied evidence is an abstract rather than the complete article, so it does not provide the interview questions, the full analysis or participant quotations, and the reported conclusions should be understood as the authors’ interpretation of the qualitative findings.

Subject of Research: Experiences and reported barriers and facilitators in clinical midwifery education in northern Malawi

Article Title: Exploring the experiences of midwifery educators in clinical teaching settings in Northern Malawi

Article References: Chikuni, B. C., Lungu, F., Bvumbwe, T., Mbakaya, B. C., & Funsani, P. (2026). Exploring the experiences of midwifery educators in clinical teaching settings in Northern Malawi. BMC Nursing. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-026-05351-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12912-026-05351-y

Keywords: midwifery education, clinical teaching, northern Malawi, qualitative study, semi-structured interviews, midwifery educators, clinical supervision, teaching space, clinical guidelines, nursing and midwifery faculties, Exploring, experiences

The study, published as an open-access short communication in Global Surgical Education, the journal of the Association for Surgical Education, was led by Marvin Man Ting Chung of the Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology at the University of Hong Kong. Between April and July 2023, the team distributed a 28-item online questionnaire to resident and resident-specialist grade doctors in the surgical and orthopedic departments of a single public university teaching hospital. The specialties included general surgery, urology, otolaryngology, paediatric surgery, neurosurgery, cardiothoracic surgery, and orthopaedics. Only doctors with prior experience teaching medical students were invited to participate, and all responses were anonymized with informed consent obtained under ethics approval from the institutional review board.

The response rate was strikingly high: 40 of the 55 eligible doctors completed the survey, or 72.7 percent, a figure that lends considerable weight to the findings. The respondents spanned every training grade from postgraduate year 1 through 6 as well as resident specialists, and their gender and seniority distribution closely mirrored the full target population, which reduces the chance that the sample was demographically skewed. Every single respondent had themselves been taught by residents during medical school, and 65 percent rated that experience as good or very good—a detail that matters, because the authors found that residents who had positive experiences learning from residents were significantly more likely to enjoy teaching themselves.

The quantitative picture of teaching activity was equally revealing. Nearly all respondents, 97.5 percent, had delivered bedside teaching; 82.5 percent had acted as student supervisors when students attached to their teams as assistant interns; 60 percent had led small-group tutorials; and 30 percent had given seminars or lectures. The average annual teaching commitment was 23.9 hours, though the range stretched from zero to 80 hours, indicating highly uneven distribution of educational labor across the department. This volume of unpaid, often unstructured educational work is delivered on top of the demanding clinical and operative obligations of a surgical residency.

The attitudinal data told a story of qualified positivity. A majority of residents, 65 percent, said they enjoyed teaching medical students, and 80 percent believed their students benefited from it. Most strikingly, 75 percent agreed that teaching improved their own knowledge and learning, an endorsement of the old pedagogical maxim that to teach is to learn twice. Nearly half, 47.5 percent, actively wanted to be more involved in teaching, and 60 percent believed that formal training in medical education would advance their professional development. These numbers suggest that the appetite for educational engagement within surgical training is far larger than many program directors might assume.

Yet the structural supports for that appetite were almost entirely absent. Only 25 percent of respondents had ever received formal training in medical education or teaching technique. Just 12.5 percent had protected time carved out from clinical duties for teaching, and a mere 20 percent felt valued by their hospital or university for their teaching contributions. Feedback on teaching quality was similarly scarce, reported by only 25 percent. Perhaps most tellingly, a substantial minority voiced outright skepticism: 37.5 percent viewed teaching as a burden, and 40 percent believed that specialists and university staff, not residents, should shoulder the responsibility for undergraduate teaching.

The statistical associations uncovered in the survey add nuance to these headline figures. Male respondents rated their enjoyment of teaching significantly higher than female respondents, a difference that reached statistical significance, and men were also more likely to want greater involvement in teaching. Senior trainees and resident specialists reported feeling more comfortable and better prepared to teach than junior residents, suggesting that pedagogical confidence accumulates with experience over the course of training. Residents who logged more annual teaching hours were more likely to agree that teaching deepened their own learning, with a moderate positive correlation, implying that the reciprocal intellectual rewards of teaching compound with sustained practice. Age, place of primary medical qualification, possession of a higher degree, and success in passing the professional surgical examination on a single attempt showed no significant association with teaching attitudes.

The authors argue that these findings expose a systemic gap that residency programs cannot afford to ignore. The literature they cite shows that structured residents-as-teachers curricula, including workshops and even globally delivered virtual courses, measurably improve residents’ knowledge, confidence, and feedback skills. Peer observation offers a low-cost alternative that reduces the faculty time required for instruction, and distributing teaching materials electronically has proven feasible in busy surgical programs. On the time problem, the authors point to North American models of protected block teaching time, in which residents are freed from on-call and clinical duties during teaching sessions while colleagues cross-cover their service obligations—support that must, they caution, come from genuinely adjusted workloads rather than simply stretching the training day. They suggest practical, low-friction interventions such as brief case-based micro-teaching on ward rounds and distributing teaching duties across the whole team, including attending surgeons.

Recognition emerges as perhaps the most psychologically potent lever. While faculty surgeons can accumulate teaching awards and educational portfolios that advance their careers, residents perceive few direct professional benefits from excellence in teaching, which may explain why some see it as uncompensated labor competing with the operating room. The authors propose awards, formal evaluations, and career advancement tied to teaching quality as mechanisms to close that gap. Their finding that residents with more teaching hours wanted even more involvement hints that institutional acknowledgment could trigger a virtuous cycle. There is also a workforce pipeline argument: prior research shows that surgical residents who are effective educators strongly influence medical students to pursue surgical careers, and the Hong Kong survey’s finding that early positive exposure to resident teachers predicts later enjoyment of teaching underscores how teaching culture perpetuates itself across generations.

The authors are appropriately candid about the study’s limits. It captures a single academic institution whose local educational culture may not generalize, the modest sample size raises the risk of response bias, and social desirability—amplified in a small departmental cohort where anonymity may not feel complete—may have inflated reported enthusiasm. The questionnaire lacked formal validity testing and had no qualitative component. Future work, they write, should use mixed methods across multiple sites with focus groups and properly validated instruments. Even so, the core message travels well beyond Hong Kong: surgical and orthopedic residents already recognize that teaching sharpens their own clinical reasoning and benefits their students. What they need from institutions is not exhortation but infrastructure—formal pedagogical training, protected time, honest feedback, and tangible recognition—so that the residents-as-teachers model can deliver on its promise for the next generation of doctors.

Subject of Research: Perceptions and experiences of surgical and orthopedic residents teaching medical students in a residency training program

Article Title: “Residents-as-teachers”: a survey on perceptions and experiences of surgical and orthopedic residents in teaching medical students

Article References: Chung, M. M. T., Cheung, B. H. H., Co, M. T. H., & Wong, T. M. (2026). “Residents-as-teachers”: a survey on perceptions and experiences of surgical and orthopedic residents in teaching medical students. Global Surgical Education – Journal of the Association for Surgical Education, 5(1), Article 155. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44186-026-00564-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44186-026-00564-w

Keywords: residents as teachers, medical education, surgical residency, orthopedics, clinical teaching, teaching hospital, undergraduate medical education, survey research, protected teaching time, faculty development, Hong Kong, surgical education

The research, led by Antita Kanjanakaew and colleagues at Mahidol University’s Faculty of Nursing together with nurse educators at Siriraj Hospital, emerged from a pressing global problem. Health systems worldwide face a shortage of qualified nurse-midwifery educators, the specialized faculty members who traditionally supervise students during clinical placements. When there are not enough educators to go around, students can find themselves watching from the sidelines rather than learning by doing. The buddy model was developed as a collaborative response, pairing students with experienced bedside nurse-midwives who act as day-to-day guides within authentic clinical settings, allowing experiential learning to continue even when formal educator supervision is stretched thin.

To understand whether the model works, the researchers turned to the people at its center. Twenty-six nurse-midwifery students participated in online focus group discussions, while fifteen nurse-midwives took part in in-depth individual interviews. Participants were recruited through purposive sampling, a technique that deliberately selects individuals with direct experience of the phenomenon under study. The team then applied qualitative content analysis, a systematic method for identifying patterns and themes within textual data, to distill hundreds of pages of conversation into a coherent account of what the buddy model delivers, and what it demands.

Four major themes emerged from the students’ side of the relationship. The first was apprehension toward interacting with unfamiliar nurses, a reminder that stepping onto a busy maternity ward as a student is an inherently vulnerable act. Students described initial anxiety about approaching nurses they did not know, worrying about being judged or turned away. Yet this apprehension typically gave way to the second theme: hands-on learning. Once relationships formed, students reported that working alongside buddy nurses enhanced their confidence, accelerated their professional identity formation, and helped them integrate classroom theory with the messy, unpredictable realities of patient care. There is a qualitative difference, the students suggested, between reading about labor management and standing beside a woman in labor with a trusted mentor at your shoulder.

The third and fourth themes revealed the model’s internal complexity. Students described a dichotomy between two types of buddies, and correspondingly different challenges of learning from each. Some buddy nurses were engaged, generous teachers who actively created learning opportunities; others were passive, offering little direction and leaving students to fend for themselves. Busy clinical environments compounded the problem, reducing learning engagement when workloads overwhelmed even the most willing mentors. In other words, the buddy model is not a self-executing mechanism. Its educational value depends heavily on the disposition, availability, and teaching capacity of the individual nurse to whom a student is assigned.

The nurse-midwives’ perspective, captured in the individual interviews, added a second, equally textured layer. Four themes again emerged. The nurse-midwives saw the buddy nurse role as multifaceted, encompassing mentor, emotional supporter, and professional role model simultaneously. They described holding the line between teaching and care, a delicate balancing act in which patient safety must always take priority even as students need room to practice. They also spoke of growth, from self to system, suggesting that serving as buddies prompted reflection not only on their own practice but on the broader structures of the clinical environment. Finally, they identified barriers to effective teaching, including heavy workloads, the constant demands of patient safety, and limited opportunities to carve out genuine learning moments within packed shifts.

When the researchers integrated both sets of perspectives, a striking picture emerged. The buddy model, they concluded, functions as a reciprocal relational learning process rather than a simple one-way transfer of knowledge. The relationship begins with approach and engagement, as students overcome initial apprehension and nurses open their practice to observation and participation. It progresses through support and professional role modeling, as buddies demonstrate not just technical skills but the emotional and ethical dimensions of midwifery. And it culminates in shared learning and professional outcomes, with students gaining competence and confidence while nurse-midwives themselves report renewed professional growth. Learning, in this framing, is not delivered but co-constructed.

That reciprocity may explain why the model appears to support psychological safety, a concept that has attracted growing attention in health professions education. Students who feel emotionally secure are more likely to ask questions, admit uncertainty, and attempt challenging procedures, all of which are essential to developing clinical judgment. The buddy relationship, built on repeated daily contact with a consistent mentor, seems to create precisely the conditions under which such vulnerability becomes productive. The study’s authors suggest this supportive relational quality is central to the model’s perceived benefits for both experiential learning and professional development.

Yet the findings come with candid caveats. The study’s participants perceived the buddy model as valuable, but its successful implementation depended on adequate engagement of buddy nurses, manageable workloads, and sufficient clinical learning opportunities. Where any of these conditions failed, the model’s benefits eroded quickly. Passive buddies and overwhelmed wards turned a potentially rich learning relationship into a hollow formality. The authors are careful to note that their findings offer preliminary, context-specific support, drawn from a single hospital and a particular academic-practice partnership, rather than a universal prescription. Generalizing to other institutions will require further research in different settings and health systems.

Even so, the implications are significant at a moment when midwifery education faces mounting pressure. Shortages of clinical educators are not unique to Thailand; they are a structural feature of nursing and midwifery training in many countries, and they threaten the pipeline of skilled birth attendants precisely when maternal health services need reinforcement. The buddy model offers a pragmatic pathway: it mobilizes the clinical workforce already in place, transforms routine care into a teaching platform, and does so without requiring large new investments in faculty. The Bangkok study suggests the approach can work, but only if institutions treat buddy nurses as educators in their own right, protecting their time, recognizing their teaching role, and selecting for the engaged, supportive disposition that students so clearly valued. The alternative, the study quietly warns, is a buddy system in name only, in which students stand beside nurses too busy to teach and learn far less than they might.

Subject of Research: Experiences of nurse-midwifery students and nurse-midwives with the buddy model of clinical education in Thailand

Article Title: Experiences of the buddy model in midwifery clinical practice: a qualitative exploration of students and nurse-midwives

Article References: Kanjanakaew, A., Ruchob, R., Sirisomboon, R., Leetheeragul, J., Buranasak, J., Khadking, N., Hungsawanus, P., & Nuampa, S. (2026). Experiences of the buddy model in midwifery clinical practice: a qualitative exploration of students and nurse-midwives. BMC Nursing. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-026-05378-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12912-026-05378-1

Keywords: buddy model, midwifery education, clinical learning, nurse-midwifery students, nurse-midwives, qualitative study, experiential learning, clinical teaching, professional identity, psychological safety, Thailand, nursing education

The research team, led by Yuqing Zhao of Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital together with colleagues from Tianjin Second People’s Hospital, Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Tianjin Medical University, set out to answer a deceptively simple question: what kind of clinical teaching do nursing interns actually want? The question carries considerable weight. Undergraduate nursing interns are becoming an increasingly vital component of the nursing workforce in China and internationally, and the quality of the clinical internship, the critical transition from classroom theory to bedside practice, has emerged as a pressing concern for nursing educators worldwide.

Methodologically, the study took the form of a descriptive qualitative investigation. The researchers used purposive sampling to recruit 21 undergraduate nursing interns, aged between 20 and 23, all of whom were in the clinical practice phase of their training in July 2025. Each participant took part in a semi-structured interview, a format that gives respondents room to speak in their own words while ensuring that key topics, anticipated influencing factors, preferred teaching methods, mentor behaviors, expectations about the structure and current state of clinical placements, and additional educational needs, were systematically explored. The interview transcripts were then analyzed using Colaizzi’s seven-step method, a well-established approach to thematic analysis in nursing research that moves from careful reading of raw text through extraction of significant statements, formulation of meanings, clustering of themes, and eventual validation of the resulting thematic structure against the original data.

What emerged from that analysis were three primary themes describing the clinical teaching traits preferred by undergraduate nursing students. The first, which the researchers describe as relational pedagogy as motivational catalyst, captures the interns’ desire for teaching grounded in personal connection, encouragement, and emotional support rather than command and correction. The second theme, experiential integration of knowledge, reflects a strong preference for learning that fuses doing with knowing: interns valued mentors who could translate abstract theoretical content into concrete bedside moments and, conversely, who used real clinical events as springboards for deeper conceptual understanding. The third theme, expanding the learning ecology beyond skills, points to an appetite for growth in dimensions that traditional skills checklists do not touch, including professional identity, communication, ethical judgment, and the psychological demands of caring work.

The framing of that first theme is perhaps the study’s most striking finding, because it signals what the authors call a shift from hierarchical to relational pedagogy. In many clinical settings, including those shaped by longstanding cultural traditions of deference to senior clinicians, the teaching relationship has historically flowed in one direction: the expert speaks, the novice complies. The interns in this study described something else. They described teaching that works as a catalyst for motivation, in which the educator’s personal qualities, their warmth, their patience, their visible enthusiasm for the profession, ignite the student’s own desire to learn. In this view, the clinical teacher is not merely a transmitter of technique but a role model whose character itself functions as a pedagogical instrument.

The second theme, experiential integration, speaks directly to one of the oldest problems in health professions education: the persistent gap between what students learn in lectures and what they encounter at the bedside. The interns participating in the study indicated that they learn best when knowledge and experience are deliberately intertwined, when a mentor pauses at the bedside to connect a textbook principle to the patient in front of them, or when a post-procedure debrief converts a hands-on moment into durable understanding. This preference aligns with a broad body of educational theory holding that learning is most effective when it is situated in authentic practice, but the study grounds that abstraction in the specific voices and priorities of Chinese nursing interns navigating their formative clinical months.

The third theme broadens the frame considerably. The interns reported unmet multidimensional learning needs that extend well beyond technical competence. They wanted support in developing as professionals, in understanding the ethical texture of nursing work, in communicating with patients and families, and in managing the emotional labor inherent in caring for people at vulnerable moments of their lives. This finding suggests that clinical placements, as currently structured, may be underdelivering on dimensions of professional formation that interns themselves consider essential. The learning ecology of the clinical environment, the study implies, should be deliberately expanded to cultivate these capacities rather than left to chance.

The implications reach into the practical machinery of nursing education. The authors conclude that the cultivation of nursing professionals depends fundamentally on clinical educators, whose personal qualities can stimulate student enthusiasm for learning, and that this motivational potential must be channeled through progressive teaching methods while attending to the multidimensional clinical learning needs of students. Done well, they argue, this combination helps interns build a coherent professional knowledge system during clinical practice, allowing clinical education to transcend traditional frameworks and achieve deeper integration. More concretely, the findings are intended to provide a theoretical basis for designing selection, training, and management programs for clinical teaching nurses, calibrated to the Chinese cultural context in which those programs will operate.

The study’s timing matters. Health systems across the globe are grappling with nursing shortages, and undergraduate nursing interns are shouldering a growing share of frontline care capacity. At the same time, the internship represents the single most consequential phase of nursing education, the point at which theoretical knowledge either solidifies into professional competence or frays under the pressures of real practice. If the quality of that transition depends heavily on the relational and pedagogical skills of clinical teachers, then investing in those teachers, choosing them well, training them deliberately, and managing their teaching roles thoughtfully, becomes a strategic priority rather than an administrative afterthought.

The research also carries a methodological contribution. By applying Colaizzi’s seven-step analysis to a purposively sampled cohort and reporting the work in line with qualitative research conventions, the team offers a replicable template for exploring learner preferences in other institutions, other regions, and other healthcare cultures. The picture that emerges is of a generation of nursing students who respect expertise but respond most powerfully to educators who teach as relationships first and hierarchies second, who turn every clinical encounter into an integrated learning opportunity, and who take seriously the full breadth of what it means to become a nurse. For educators and hospital administrators, the message is clear: the future of clinical nursing education may belong less to the loudest authority in the room than to the most motivating presence at the bedside.

Subject of Research: Clinical teaching preferences of undergraduate nursing interns in China

Article Title: Clinical teaching preferences of undergraduate nursing interns in China: a descriptive qualitative study

Article References: Zhao, Y., Zhao, S., Zhang, W., Huo, Q., Wang, M., Sun, X., Li, H., Zhao, Y., & Lu, Q. (2026). Clinical teaching preferences of undergraduate nursing interns in China: a descriptive qualitative study. BMC Nursing. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-026-05346-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12912-026-05346-9

Keywords: nursing education, clinical teaching, undergraduate nursing interns, qualitative research, mentorship, China, nursing workforce, relational pedagogy, clinical internship, teaching methods, nurse mentors, health professions education