Courage, commitment and resilience: Traits of student midwives who fail and retake modules

A previous article considered the relevance of Hunter and Warren's (2013) findings to pre-registration midwifery education, and whether student midwives were adequately prepared to deal with the ever more complex demands of their chosen profession (Power, 2016). It is estimated that approximately 20% of students who commence the pre-registration midwifery programme will not qualify to become a midwife (Centre for Workforce Intelligence, 2012). This is compounded by the fact that the increasingly complex demands of midwifery practice lead some midwives to leave the profession, with the top five reasons being: dissatisfaction with staffing levels; dissatisfaction with the quality of care they were able to give; excessive workload; lack of managerial support; and poor working conditions (Royal College of Midwives (RCM), 2016). Given the current ‘retirement time bomb’ the profession is facing (RCM, 2015: 2), it is more important than ever that student midwives are supported to successfully complete their programme of study to join the depleting workforce. Students leave the programme for many reasons such as deciding midwifery is the wrong career choice, financial difficulties and family circumstances (Galloway, 2015); however, academic failure is not usually cited as a key reason for leaving the course. The experiences of those students who have failed and retaken a module are the focus of this article, as their narratives give an insight into their character traits and motivations.