Midwives’ Views and Perceptions of Patient Dignity in Midwifery Services

Abstract

Background and objective: Human dignity which is defined as respect to human individuality is a highly recommended necessity to be taken into account in medical settings to deliver high-quality services and raise the patients’ satisfaction. Due to a lack of well-defined provisions and instructions in midwifery practice in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, human dignity is threatened in this field. The present study was an attempt to figure out the meaning of patient dignity, what threatens patients’ dignity, and how to promote patients' dignity in midwifery settings in maternity departments and clinics in Erbil, in the Kurdistan region-Iraq. Method: The present qualitative study was conducted on 10 Kurdish registered midwives who were working delivery room of Maternity Teaching Hospital and Dyke Private Hospital located in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with the midwives to collect required data. The interviews were recorded and then transcribed verbatim and analyzed using the six methodological activities proposed by Van Manen, and the themes and subthemes were extracted. Results: Analyzing the transcribed interviews resulted in emergence of one main theme, namely “need for holistic support” which had subthemes, namely “need for medical support”, “need for mental support”, and “need for sympathetic support”. Conclusion: Human dignity of pregnant and childbearing mothers in maternity departments and clinics is relatively low due to lack of sufficient equipment and facilities and insufficient number of midwives and maternity staff. Therefore, appropriate measures need to be taken in these regards.

Keywords

• Human dignity
• Midwifery
• Maternity wards
• Pregnancy
• Childbearing women