A professional profile of the contemporary teacher in the opinion of nursing and midwifery students

__________________________________________________________________________________________ Introduction: The transformation of the system of nurse and midwife training is becoming the object of empirical research concerning the effectiveness of the teaching/learning process. Purpose: To know the expectations of a chosen group of students towards vocational teachers and vocational training environment as well as the preferred forms and methods of training. Material and methods: The study was conducted among 240 students of nursing and midwifery at the Medical University in Bialystok. The research tool was an original survey questionnaire. Results: A desired quality of the vocational teacher is the ability to transmit knowledge (96%). Graduate students express their willingness to use active methods of teaching in theoretical courses (p≤.05) and see a possibility of using their knowledge for problem solving (p≤0.05). The respondents, especially undergraduate students, have a positive opinion about their teachers’ content knowledge (p≤0.05) and as regards the didactic tools applied by teachers, in the scale from 1 to 5, their quality is assessed at 3.5 and their validity – at 3.6. Conclusions: Vocational teachers should constantly improve their knowledge sharing skills, support this knowledge with examples and use valid and good quality didactic tools.