ABSTRACT
Each midwifery school will have a different approach to student preparation. Midwifery students deserve and require supportive, on-site mentorship and supervision in any clinical setting. Midwifery trainees, due to the nature of the profession, encounter women during times of personal vulnerability associated with the intensity and unpredictability of labor and birth, as well as the sudden public exposure of what are normally private body parts. Since the re-emergence of US midwifery education in the late twentieth century, midwife trainees have participated in international experiences to enhance their education. In the past, midwifery trainees would frequently arrive in another country, after minimal arrangements, to volunteer in a maternity hospital for several weeks in exchange for some distant support from a US-based training school. Healthcare institutions in low- or middle-income countries where most midwifery trainees are placed present challenges regarding the quality of care students will witness and in which they will participate.
