Without obtaining your sign offs in a timely fashion, you could loose everything.
Student midwives need to be better about getting sign offs/ signatures from your preceptors. Do not go 6 months without getting your signatures or you may have to start over.
Let that sink in
You could loose months or years of your work just because you were too lazy to stay on top of getting the signatures you need.
When you enter your apprenticeship it is hard to imagine anything bad happening. Including not being able to have all of your hard work signed off on but you need to be prepared for anything.
Your relationship with your preceptor may go sour
It could be fine one day and be in the toilet within a week. Do not be the student who has to get her school involved (if you attend one) before your preceptor will return your signatures.
In fact, she may never sign off. It becomes your word against hers. Did you really primary that appointment? Did you really catch that baby?
Who knows? Not NARM.
You did all of that hard work and now it is gone just because you were too lazy to have your paperwork signed regularly.
Your preceptor may be abusive
Know your boundaries and your worth. Do not stay in an abusive relationship. If your relationship with your preceptor sours and she becomes abusive you will want the ability to walk away immediately.
You do not want to have to stay for months with the hope that she will sign your papers a couple at a time while she drags you through the mud.
Your preceptor may die
Yes, it has happened quite a few times that I know of just in Texas. A few students were current on signatures and only had to deal with the grief of their mentor dying.
A few of them were not current and lost months of work and had to redo all of the appointments and births they lost.
Your preceptor may move away
Even if your relationship is great with them, shipping your unfinished paperwork to them and waiting on them to sign it, IF they agree to sign it is stressful.
One student once waited 2 years before getting her paperwork back and it was in poor shape. She had already moved on and redid all of those requirements.
Interview questions
When you start apprenticing and you are able to meet with your preceptor to discuss what her rules are and what you expect of her you need to set a plan.
Both of you need to know from the beginning that you will be asking for signatures at a scheduled time. Follow through on this! Do not get lazy and forget to record appointments and births.
Related – Questions to ask your prospective preceptor
Make a plan
I believe the best practice is to get your signatures weekly but I did not follow that myself (and it cost me a great deal of stress, anxiety, insomnia and hair loss). That way, if a preceptor does die or your relationship sours you will be caught up and can loose an appointment or two.
No matter what, have a plan to be signed off every day, weekly, two times a month, monthly, etc. NEVER wait more than a month to obtain your signatures especially if you are doing primaries!
I cannot stress enough that while you are in your primary phase you need to have births signed off on by the two or three day postpartum visit.
Relationships sour fast and you do not want to have to do over primary births and all of the prenatal appointments that come with it.
Have a safe place
Guard your paperwork. That stack of papers is your whole life and if you spill a soda, leave it at a birth or have a house fire you could loose everything.
I bought a fire resistant file box to put all of my completed paperwork in and I love it. I have a whole system to my paperwork and it works really well for me. Watch for my next post – organization tips for students.
Scan and copy your paper work
Scan your finished paperwork for your records. You cannot submit copies to NARM and most schools but if a tragedy happened you may be able to figure something out with your copies.
This way, you have a copy of all of your signed paperwork and if the hard copies burn in a fire, get lost in the mail to NARM, etc. you at least have a back up.
Not me. It couldn’t happen to me.
Stop it. Stop it right now. No student ever thinks it will happen to them but it does so, so often! It has happened to me. It has happened to my best friend. It has happened to many students I know and 100% of them could have been preventable or less severe if we would have set up a plan and stuck to it.
Do you want to repeat 8 of your primary births because you were too careless to have them signed off on immediately? NO! Just do it. Please, for me.
It really isn’t that hard
I hope you never have to be worried about if your preceptor will sign your paperwork or not because it is not a fun feeling to realize you will be delayed from finishing your schooling. If you obtain your signatures regularly, you will never feel that feeling and be able to walk away without stressing.
Does the thought of the hundreds of pages of signatures give you anxiety? Is that why you are delaying getting your signatures? Just start! Do it.
Having anxiety about all of the papers you need to keep track of is not a reason to not obtain signatures!
Have you had a hard time obtaining your signatures? I would love to hear your stories below. It could help another reader get the courage to keep on top of their paperwork.
What a great post! My signatures were like gold to me! I made sure to have everything well organized! At MCU we always uploaded our forms to our clinical module, so it was saved somewhere electronically in case it was ever damaged.
At my clinical placement, I had things signed either during shift or at the end of a shift. Usually after every birth. It was way too hard, since there were several students, to pull the charts and go appointment by appointment if it was done even days later. The midwife couldn’t remember which clients she did with which students, so we’d have to pull charts, and that was no fun! It was better to get them signed off the day of or right after the appointment.
I had all my forms organized into a folder and each sheet was in a sheet protector. I also had different tabs for different phases. I protected that folder like my life depended on it! One thing I never did, was get a fire resistant box!! Had I thought about it back then, I definitely would have bought one!
Thank you for making an honest post about abusive apprenticeships where the preceptor doesn’t sign off logs. I’ve know several students to whom this happened, and it’s absolutely horrible. There are great preceptors out there, but there are also terrible ones.
That is wonderful! I did not have that option at my school but I did scan my finished papers into a folder on my computer.
That is wonderful organization! So many of us fall too comfortable with our preceptors and thinknit could never happen to us. I commend you for staying on top of it.
My school does not have the option to upload outlr signed aheets but I did scan them to my computer.