Discursive constructions of student midwives’ professional identities: A discourse analysis

Mcluckie, Connie; Kuipers, Yvonne

Abstract

Background
The construction and performance of professional identity is significant to broader socio-cultural understandings of who ‘professionals’ are and what they do. Importantly, it is also implicated in the development and enactment of policy, regulation, education, and professional practice. Professional identity is linked to self-esteem, self-efficacy, professional value, confidence and success. The salience of this in relation to midwifery practice is highly significant; aspects of autonomy, confidence, competence, responsibility, and accountability are all implicated in the provision of safe and effective care.

Aim
To explore how student midwives are constructed in the discourses of policy, professionalism, and learning, to provide new perspectives to inform, policy, education, and practice.

Methods
An adapted critical discourse analysis of the United Kingdom (UK) Nursing and Midwifery Council’s 2009 Standards for pre-registration midwifery education, using a three-step process: exploring discourse at the level of (1) discursive practice (2) linguistic features of the text, and (3) social practice.

Findings/ Discussion
The discourses that relate to midwifery education and practice emerge within socio-political and historical contexts. Constructions of identity are articulated through a rule-bound framework which includes competence, confidence and ‘good health and good character’. There is a requirement for midwives to ‘be’ responsible, accountable, autonomous, professional, competent, and confident. Regulatory power is reinforced through medico-legal discourses, with the status of midwifery discursively presented as inferior to medicine.

Conclusion
According to the Standards, midwives must be a lot of things in their role and function. The Standards’ discourses are authoritative, legislative and controlling, creating an ideology about professional status and agency which constructs an ‘imaginary autonomy’; becoming a midwife is more automatic (with the perception of control), than agentic. All of which has significance for the social practice of midwifery

Citation

Mcluckie, C., & Kuipers, Y. (2024). Discursive constructions of student midwives’ professional identities: A discourse analysis. Nurse Education in Practice, 74, Article 103847. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nepr.2023.103847

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 14, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Nov 20, 2023
• Publication Date: 2024-01
• Deposit Date: Nov 29, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 29, 2023
• Journal: Nurse Education in Practice
• Print ISSN: 1471-5953
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 74
• Article Number: 103847
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nepr.2023.103847
• Keywords: Education; Discourse analysis; Professional identity; Professionalism Regulation; Student midwife; Ideology; Professional standards; Midwifery
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/3399493