Evaluating an internal quality assurance process for achieving national accreditation standards in midwifery education: a study protocol.

The World Health Organization and the International Confederation of Midwives emphasize the importance of accreditation to enhance quality in midwifery education. In midwifery education programmes, internal self-assessments are used to meet accreditation criteria. However, research on this topic is scarce. Therefore, this paper describes how we plan to conduct an evaluation of an internal quality assurance process in midwifery education aimed at achieving national accreditation standards in Bangladesh. This study has a longitudinal exploratory design and will be guided by the principles of process evaluation of complex interventions. An internal quality assurance self-assessment intervention will be introduced at 31 private and public education institutions in Bangladesh. To ensure a sustainable implementation, the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle will be introduced. Data will be collected using self-administered questionnaires and focus group discussions with midwifery faculty and final-semester students. Descriptive statistics and regression models will be performed for the quantitative data, and the qualitative data will be analysed using content analysis. It is anticipated that, without internal quality assurance of midwifery education programmes, accreditation alone is unlikely to enhance quality. We aspire for this research project to illustrate a process that the midwifery institutes can implement themselves for sustainable transformation towards high-quality midwifery education in countries where such internal quality assurance processes have not yet been integrated into the education system.