| Summary: | The substandard care noted and reported on in midwifery practice at level one midwifery care institutions in South Africa raises a concern about the effectiveness of the assessment strategies used at nursing institutions in enhancing midwifery programme outcomes. The concern is mainly directed particularly at the performance of the newly qualified professional nurses as they are the ones that practise at level one institutions, had just gone through training and been found to be competent practitioners. The success of any training programme and specifically midwifery practice as in the content of this study is dependent on the effectiveness of the assessment techniques or strategies used; hence assessment is considered integral to monitoring the quality of the midwifery care programme. The current study used a quantitative research design to explore and describe the role of assessments in enhancing midwifery programme outcomes at a public nursing education institution in the Eastern Cape Province. Recommendations to enhance the role of assessments for the benefit of midwifery programme outcomes at a public nursing education institution that were made were guided by the findings of the study. Participants were non-randomly selected and were personally provided with a self-developed questionnaire to complete. 134 participants returned fully completed questionnaires while approximately 25% of the selected sample did not return theirs. Data was captured on an excel spread sheet and analysed using Cronbach’s alpha programme under the guidance of the statistician and supervisor. Findings of the study were that: • the participants perceived the role of assessments as positively enhancing the midwifery programme outcomes, • though they also agreed and strongly agreed that there were major factors that prevented enhancement of midwifery programme outcomes. Ethical considerations were autonomy, beneficence, justice and non-maleficence. The validity and reliability of the data- collection instrument was ensured. Furthermore, recommendations were made for nursing education, clinical practice and future research. The study was conducted during the period of July 2014 to January 2016.
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