A Cross-Sectional Study of Midwives’ Proactive Behavior in Midwifery Practice

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Researchersof this study focused on possible tools supporting midwives in the process of continuous changes in midwifery practice. A previous concept analysis by Mestdagh et al. revealed possible benefits of proactive behavior in midwifery. Midwives behaving proactively notice changes as an opportunity, are always one step ahead, anticipate future possible barriers, adapt easily, work autonomously and in a constant quest for efficient, effective and qualitative care strongly leaning to the state-of-the-art. Additionally proactive behavior could result in an increased job satisfaction, work-efficiency, commitment and higher coping strategies in increasing resistance of stress. On top of that, improved team productivity and organizational success may occur. Proactive behavior is possibly associated to several individual and/or contextual antecedents who were recently tested in a pilot study within a group (n = 98) of midwifery students. Two antecedents, being control appraisal and role breadth self-efficacy, were identified as important predictors of proactive behavior. This study aims to confirm and/or supplement recent insights on antecedents of proactive behavior by studying a group (n = 133) of midwives and compare their characteristics and their antecedents on proactive behavior with the results of our earlier study with student-midwives as population.

Healthcare practice is characterized by rapid evolutions, the need for cost-effective and accessible health care and constantly changing practices. In recent years, the context of midwifery practice presents a growing complexity, due to rapid evolutions, such as centralization of care, medicalization of childbirth as well as an overflow of new insights, innovations and availability of evidence on interventions. Births also became increasingly complex.