Slovenian midwifery professionalization : perception of midwives and related health professions

Mivšek, Ana Polona (author), Hundley, Vanora (author), Van Teijlingen, Edwin R. (author), Pahor, Majda (author), Hlebec, Valentina (author)

Introduction: This article presents research into the professionalization of midwifery in Slovenia. Since recognition by related occupations is important for professions, this comparative study asked doctors and nurses in Slovenia about their perceptions of the status of midwifery. Methods: A questionnaire survey was conducted with 300 Slovenian midwives, 666 nurses and 416 obstetricians. The questionnaire included statements covering traditional sociological notions of the profession (ethics, theory, power), and three notions based on new elements of professionalism (reflective practice, interdisciplinary working, and partnership with clients). Results: Findings suggest that nurses perceived themselves to be less autonomous than midwives, and this partly explains why most nurses thought that midwifery should be a specialized course of study, after the general nursing diploma. Obstetricians claimed to support midwives, however, they did not give midwives credit for basic midwifery competencies and did not feel midwifery to be equal to their profession. Midwives revealed not to feel autonomous; they felt that nursing and obstetrics is jeopardizing independent midwifery practice. Conclusions: Slovenian midwifery was poorly evaluated in some attributes of professionalism, especially knowledge and autonomy. Even midwives themselves consider midwifery more occupation than profession. The autonomy of midwifery will be hard to achieve in the institutions of medical dominance. The study revealed that participants of all three groups are in a competitive relation and are poorly aware of the roles and competencies of the other two professions. Therefore, partially joined education might be beneficial in order to promote interprofessional collaboration in the future.

• Language: English
• Keywords: midwives, occupations, professionalism, professional boundaries, sociology of health
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: ZF - Faculty of Health Sciences; FSD - Faculty of Social Work
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Submitted for review: 25.01.2021
• Article acceptance date: 22.03.2021
• Publication date: 18.05.2021
• Year: 2021
• Number of pages: Str. 1-10
• Numbering: Vol. 5
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-128662
• UDC: 614.253.5:331.101.23(497.4)
• ISSN on article: 2585-2906
• DOI: 10.18332/ejm/137664
• COBISS.SI-ID: 71082243
• Publication date in RUL: 22.07.2021

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: European journal of midwifery
• Shortened title: Eur. j. midwifery
• Publisher: EU. European Publishing
• ISSN: 2585-2906
• COBISS.SI-ID: 5502315

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.
• Licensing start date: 18.05.2021