ShakenBelief in the Birthing Process
ShakenBelief in the Birthing Process
Becket al. (2015) conducted a study to assess the ideology of shakenbelief in the birth process. The objective of the research was toestablish the prevalence and onerous of secondary traumatic stress innurses working as midwives. It also sought to examine theirexperiences while attending traumatic births. The authors employed aconvergent and parallel mixed method (Beck et al., 2015). They alsoexploited the secondary traumatic stress scale to collectquantitative data from the participants. They tailored theinformation to explore the participants’ experiences whileattending traumatic births. They recruited 473 certified midwifenurses to take part in the study (Beck et al., 2015). The inclusioncriteria involved having attended at least one traumatic birth. Theresearchers used the Statistical Package for Social Sciences toanalyze the qualitative data.
Intheir results, the authors indicated that out of the 473 midwifenurses who took part in the study, 52% completed the questionnaires.Among the participants, 29% reported severe secondary traumaticstress (Beck et al., 2015). The three common traumatic births, asdescribed by the participants, include fetal death, shoulderdystocia, and infant resuscitation.
Ananalysis of the content revealed various six themes that nursespursue in secondary traumatic stress. They include determining theextent of helplessness of the patients, a trio of post-traumaticstress symptoms and working in a team. According to Beck et al.(2015), sometimes nurses face litigations and become demoralized inthe process. The stress of restarting work affects most of them. Intheir discussion, the authors recommended the recognition ofsecondary traumatic stress as a professional risk in midwifery.
Amajor strength observed in the research is that the authors involveda big number of participants. Besides, the inclusion criterion isconsistent with the primary inquiry. Therefore, the findings of theresearch are transferable to other similar conditions. Besides, theresearchers gave a rationale for conducting their study and itscontribution to the midwifery nursing.
Accordingto them, secondary traumatic stress should be part of the risks thatnurses face while attending patients in the labor wards (Beck et al.,2015). However, the study being qualitative in nature does not have ahypothesis that the authors could have tested after analyzing theresults. Although the objectives and the research questions areguided them, the research could have been more responsive to theresearch questions if it had a hypothesis. Also, after identifyingthe research limitations, the authors do not include a conclusion intheir study. The discussion serves as the conclusion. It does notgive the reader a clear indication of where the authors` ideas end.
Iconcur with the authors’ supposition that policymakers and expertsin midwifery nursing should recognize secondary traumatic stress as aprofessional risk in the practice. The rationale for this is thatnurses have trouble while they face confrontation from clients whomay not understand particular unfortunate situations. Most of thecauses of trauma, including, stillbirths and infant resuscitation,are not directly caused by the nurses’ actions. In addition, facinglitigation daunts the nurses’ enthusiasm, especially, if they donot receive any support from their colleagues and institutions.Therefore, when they occur, the midwives many find it difficult toattend another birth for the fear of undergoing a similar experience.Recognizing it as a part of the risks can assist nurses in dealingwith the effect. Their practice and morale should not be in jeopardyof occurrences to which they have limited ascendancy.
References
Beck,C. T., LoGiudice, J., & Gable, R. K. (2015). A mixed‐methodsstudy of secondary traumatic stress in certified nurse‐midwives:Shaken belief in the birth process. Journalof Midwifery & Women’s Health,60(1),16-23.