Date of Award

2024

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (School of Nursing & Midwifery)

Schools and Centres

Nursing and Midwifery

First Supervisor

Professor Sadie Geraghty

Second Supervisor

Dr Amanda Timler

Third Supervisor

Adjunct Associate Professor Sally Pezaro

Fourth Supervisor

Dr Sheena McChlery

Abstract

Midwifery is emotionally challenging work; midwives provide care to women and families at one of the most significant points of their lives and this work is not without impact upon the midwives themselves. Midwifery students require more than just the cognitive ability to learn the requisite midwifery knowledge and competence at performing practical midwifery skills, the knowledge and skills that midwives require intersect with and are influenced by a wide range of emotions and emotional experiences. Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to identify and manage one’s own emotions, as well as the emotions of others and within other healthcare disciplines EI is considered an essential attribute of an effective practitioner. There is a lack of evidence that investigates EI from a midwifery perspective, requiring further exploration given the emotionally challenging nature of midwifery. This study fills a gap in the knowledge by exploring EI and how it relates to midwifery from the perspective of Australian midwifery students.

The overall aim of this study was to develop an understanding of midwifery students’ perceptions of EI and its relationship to midwifery to inform education and support of midwifery students. This research employed a convergent mixed methods design comprising of a larger core qualitative component and a smaller quantitative element. The qualitative component used a phenomenographical methodology to gain a collective understanding of midwifery students’ perceptions and experiences of EI. Phenomenography has a distinctly different approach from other qualitative methods as it places emphasis on the ‘collective’ meaning over individual experience. In depth interviews were conducted with 16 midwifery students within Australia and phenomenographic analysis was used to identify five categories of description (the phenomenographic equivalent of themes) revealing the different ways midwifery students conceptualised EI and its relationship to midwifery: ‘Reading the room’, ‘Nature versus nurture’, ‘Sipping tea intelligently’, ‘Midwifery is different’ and the ‘Emotional rollercoaster’. The quantitative component used a survey design to measure the levels of EI in an Australian midwifery student sample. The survey utilised the Assessing Emotions Scale (AES) tool to measure the EI of 116 midwifery students and contained an optional open text qualitative question. Descriptive statistics reported a mean AES score of 134 for the midwifery student sample, putting this AES score in the highest 25% of recorded samples using this measure of EI, with most other populations recording mean AES score of less than 130. No statistically significant differences were found between the AES scores of the different midwifery student groups either by program type or age.

The findings of this research offer a unique midwifery perspective on the nature of EI and how it is viewed and experienced in different ways by midwifery students. Overall, this thesis brought to the forefront evidence that EI is an integral part of midwifery practice and is a necessary attribute that midwifery students require to support their practice in an emotionally challenging profession. These findings have implications for midwifery educational curricula and all those who support midwifery students within academic and clinical spaces, with recommendations made to support the development of EI to prepare midwifery students to deal with the emotional load of midwifery.

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