Adapting a perinatal empathic training method from South Africa to Germany

Midwife empathy and its association with the childbirth experience: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND

Although pregnancy and childbirth comprise a life-course that most midwives experience, whether their own experiences of childbirth resonate with other women during childbirth remains to be determined. In this study, we therefore characterized midwives' empathic capabilities and defined their underlying factors.

METHOD

We conducted a cross-sectional study with data from 464 midwives in Guangdong, China, that were collected through the "Chinese version of the Jefferson Scale of Empathy for Health Professionals (JSE-HP)." This questionnaire contains sections related to midwife demographics and delivery characteristics. We then implemented multivariate logistic regression analysis to identify empathy-related factors.

RESULTS

Our analysis revealed 303 (65.3%) participants in the high-empathy group while 161 (34.7%) were in the middle-empathy group. Compared with the reference groups, these results indicated that higher empathy was associated with an elevated educational level (OR, 1.83; 95% CI, 1.04-3.25), high monthly salary (OR, 2.30; 95% CI, 1.11-4.80), and no shift work (OR, 2.89; 95% CI, 1.09-7.63). The odds of a high empathy score were higher for midwives who experienced two childbirths (2.27, 1.11-4.66) and for those who had children under the age of 3 years (2.81, 1.34-5.92).

CONCLUSION

Midwives possess a moderate-to-high level of empathy, and the greater the number of childbirths they experienced and the younger their children, the higher their reported empathy score. This study contributes novel information regarding the empathic behavior of midwives toward women who give birth in China.

SKIP: emotional well-being intervention

SKIP (Students for Kids International Projects) is a student-led global health charity; each university branch partners with a local non-governmental organisation in their branch country, where they run interventions identified by the local community. Research in these countries has identified an educational need for interventions around emotional well-being. In this article, we reflect on the process of creating culturally appropriate educational resources for children and young people in low- and middle-income countries, to be delivered by non-professionals. SKIP has a Research Ethics Policy. No external ethics approval was required.