Professional attitudes towards normal childbirth in a shared care unit

Objective: to identify and compare obstetricians', midwives' and, assistant personnel's attitudes towards Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPG) for normal birth of The National Health System. Design: quantitative methodology using a self-completed questionnaire regarding the recommendations of the CPG for normal birth with two five-point Likert scales that measured the degree of agreement and the level of applicability. Setting: a Labour Ward: Catalonia, Spain. Participants: a total sample of 96 professionals (obstetricians=32, midwives=44 and assistant personnel=20) answered the questionnaire. Findings: midwives and obstetricians often have significantly divergent levels of agreement on key recommendations. Assistant personnel have more similar opinions to midwives', even though they are a more diverse group. Midwives are more in line with the recommendations of CPG for normal birth than obstetricians and assistant personnel. Concerning the applicability, obstetricians showed greater degree of applicability, followed by the other two groups. Conclusions: given that there is divergence in opinion on agreement and applicability between professional groups it is necessary to identify areas of accordance, disagreement or ambiguity of knowledge and practice among all care providers, so that midwives can facilitate normal childbirth in a shared-model unit. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.