Midwifery students in Nigeria face a heavy reading load, from thick textbooks on obstetric anatomy to fast-moving clinical journals. Trying to read every single word of every assigned chapter at the same speed is a quick path to exhaustion. Academic reading requires a toolkit of different strategies. You adjust your pace based on your purpose—whether you are searching for a specific drug dosage, previewing a new topic, or studying mechanisms of labour for a professional board exam. Mastering these approaches saves time and improves your retention of critical maternal and child health concepts.
Skimming means letting your eyes run rapidly over a text to get a general overview of its content. Think of it as looking at the landscape from an aeroplane before walking the ground.
Scanning is a targeted search strategy. Instead of trying to understand the whole page, your eyes move quickly across the text hunting for a specific piece of data—such as a normal baseline fetal heart rate, a specific sign of pre-eclampsia, or the management protocol for postpartum shock.
To scan effectively, keep the exact keyword or number in your head. Let your eyes sweep down the page in a zigzag pattern or straight down the center until your target jumps out at you. Once you find it, slow down and read the surrounding sentences to ensure you understand the context.
Intensive reading is the slow, deliberate study of a text. When you encounter complex clinical guidelines, mechanisms of abnormal labour, or pharmacology equations, skimming and scanning will fail you. You must slow down significantly.
During intensive reading, you engage in active processing: you question the text, take detailed notes, draw diagrams of pelvic floors or fetal positions, and look up unfamiliar terms in a medical dictionary. This strategy requires high concentration and should be reserved for core curriculum materials that you need to master for clinical practice and professional exams.
A common mistake among student midwives is treating every reading assignment the same way. If you read a journal article on antenatal care booking systems using intensive reading from start to finish, you will waste hours. Instead, start by skimming the abstract and headings to see if the paper is relevant to your assignment. Scan the results section for specific statistical percentages if you need them for a project. Reserve intensive reading only for the methodology and discussion sections if you are critiquing the research for a seminar. Matching your strategy to your academic goal ensures efficient and stress-free learning.