Empowerment and Burnout of Midwives at the End of Health Emergency From COVID-19

IRCCS Burlo Garofolo64 enrolled

Overview

As the fifth wave of COVID-19 comes to an end and the pandemic's countermeasures expire, there is a need to assess the impact of the pandemic on health care providers, especially midwives, as the professionals deputed to promote and protect women's holistic health, in all phases, physiological and otherwise, of the life cycle. The midwife considers the person as a whole, in which the mind-body-culture components interact profoundly. Prevention and containment measures have impacted on midwifery clinical and nursing practices with the mandatory continuous use of personal protective equipments (PPE) and social distancing to protect the patient and the practitioner, effectively hindering the intimacy of the woman-midwife relationship. The impact assessment focuses on two dimensions: learning, investigated as perceived empowerment, and perceived malaise, investigated as burnout. Empowerment has a positive connotation, which can offset burnout, a syndrome that affects the physical, psychological and emotional health of midwives and can have significant negative implications on midwife turnover, patient safety and outcomes, and the efficiency of healthcare organisations.

Study Type

OBSERVATIONAL

Enrollment

Conditions

COVID-19

Interventions

Evaluation of midwifes' burnout

Eligibility

Sex: ALLMin age: 21 YearsMax age: 65 Years

Medical Language ↔ Plain English

Inclusion Criteria: 1. Midwives registered in the orders of Friuli Venezia Giulia (FVG) region 2. Midwives in practice for at least one year 3. Midwives practicing in FVG region Exclusion Criteria: 1. Consent not granted 2. Midwives in retirement for more than a year

Locations (2)

Institute for Maternal and Child Health - IRCCS "Burlo Garofolo"

Trieste, Italy

RECRUITING

Ordine delle ostrtriche di Trieste e Gorizia

Trieste, Italy

RECRUITING

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Evaluation of empowerment of midwives

Midwives empowerment will be evaluated with the italian validated version of the "Perceptions of empowerment in midwifery scale-revised" (PEMSR). It consists of 19 items, expressing 4 subscales divided into four subscales: autonomy/empowerment (4 items); manager support (5 items); professional recognition (5 items); and skills and resources (5 items). Total scores are calculated for each of the subscales by summing all the scores from each item, and then dividing by the number of items in the same subscale. Scores range from 1 (low level of empowerment), to 5 (high level of empowerment).

Time frame: At enrolment

Number of midwives affected by burnout

Burnout will be evaluated with the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), an instrument of 22 Likert items of 7 points on feelings related to work. Respondents rate how often they experience these feelings on a 7-point Likert scale from 0 (never) to 6 (every day). The MBI includes 3 subscales or dimensions: emotional exhaustion (EE), depersonalization (DP, and personal accomplishment (PA). Higher item scores in EE and DP and low in PA correspond to high levels of burnout.