Critical incidents in Obstetrics and Childcare students of a chilean public University: Exploring their identity

Abstract

Introduction: Critical incidents are unexpected temporal-spatial events that occur in the university classrooms and clinical training centers that unbalance the student´s identity by exceeding their emotional threshold. To deal with them, it is required that the affected evaluate their own resources and consequences, in order to reduce the negative effects of the environment.

Objectives: To identify the most recurrent critical incidents and the coping strategies experienced by Obstetrics and Child Care students at a Chilean public university in various educational contexts.

Material y Method: A qualitative interpretive study under the principles of grounded theory. 11 students of the career were interviewed via telematics. The inductive coding strategy and the constant comparison method were applied until the theoretical saturation of the emerging categories processed in Atlas.ti was evidenced.

Results: 15 critical incidents were recognized, 11 in the classroom and four in clinical training centers, predominating events related to evaluation and personal conflicts with teachers. The coping strategies of negation and evasion were frequent in the participants; reflexive strategies were not investigated.

Conclusions: Critical incidents occurred mostly in the classroom in theoretical-practical subjects. Self-protection measures were used for coping, not generating new configurations in the identity of the students. This study supports the need to create spaces for reflective dialogue based on the analysis of critical incidents that provide effective tools to deal with these unexpected events.