Team midwifery: The views and job satisfaction of midwives

Women׳s views on partnership working with midwives during pregnancy and childbirth

“…The response rate to the survey was good at 87%, which is higher than average response rates to postal surveys found in health research, which is in the region of 50% (Ford et al, 2009). Todd et al (1998) identified that the impact of non-response bias was limited as responses were equally represented across all teams (MacDonald et al, 2009), increasing the validity of the findings. Community midwives working in a team midwifery model, felt that women received better antenatal and postnatal continuity in conventional community care models, because of the size of the teams.…”

“…Todd et al (1998) undertook a quantitative study in the UK, using a postal survey of seven community based teams and compared the findings with hospital midwives. The response rate to the survey was good at 87%, which is higher than average response rates to postal surveys found in health research, which is in the region of 50% (Ford et al, 2009).…”

“…Community midwives spoke of being 'disconnected' from women because the integrated teams meant that they were rarely able to form a relationship with the woman. The researchers concluded that the level of continuity of care in labour was low, relationships with women were rarely established and the midwives themselves found the on-call requirements impacted adversely on their social lives, leaving them feeling disillusioned with this model of care (Todd et al, 1998;Shallow, 2001). Despite this, community midwives preferred the team model of care because they felt it offered more variety and enabled them to fully utilise their skills, although the majority of midwives felt that team midwifery had not improved care for women (Todd et al, 1998).…”

“…The researchers concluded that the level of continuity of care in labour was low, relationships with women were rarely established and the midwives themselves found the on-call requirements impacted adversely on their social lives, leaving them feeling disillusioned with this model of care (Todd et al, 1998;Shallow, 2001). Despite this, community midwives preferred the team model of care because they felt it offered more variety and enabled them to fully utilise their skills, although the majority of midwives felt that team midwifery had not improved care for women (Todd et al, 1998). The disadvantage of using a quantitative survey to explore participants' views in the study by Todd et al (1998), is that the questions were closed, using a likert scale, and at the point of analysis conflated to agree or disagree.…”

“…Despite this, community midwives preferred the team model of care because they felt it offered more variety and enabled them to fully utilise their skills, although the majority of midwives felt that team midwifery had not improved care for women (Todd et al, 1998). The disadvantage of using a quantitative survey to explore participants' views in the study by Todd et al (1998), is that the questions were closed, using a likert scale, and at the point of analysis conflated to agree or disagree. Whilst the researchers achieved a very good response rate, the use of a postal survey resulted in a lack of meaningful dialogue that would have been enhanced by the addition of a qualitative element to explore the findings in more depth.…”