gms | German Medical Science

Background: Multi-professional cooperation is currently discussed as a goal as well as a challenge in the context of establishing Early Prevention support services for parents and their children [1]. Strong linkages and a close cooperation between institutions and services in the fields of healthcare on the one hand and public support Youth Welfare Services on the other are essential for improving the development opportunities for children and parents in their families and within society in general [1].

Community midwives are considered to be important actors of the healthcare context in the field of Early Prevention, but they are rather rarely part of the Early Prevention networks [1]. Up until today, there has been little research on the topic of cooperation of community midwives in networks of Early Prevention. Only few contributions have been published on this topic, all of them emphasizing the need for further research [2][3].

The research project which is part of the midwifery research called “Family Orientated Maternity Care” at the Osnabrück University of Applied Science aims to investigate the potential contribution of community midwives to the field of Early Prevention based on their own perspective. As part of the project, a literature search was conducted focusing on cooperation potentials of community midwives.

Aims: The envisaged poster will present results of an explorative literature review analyzing national and international, qualitative scientific publications which report on cooperative activities of midwives in the field of community care. Its goal is to identify central topics of collaboration between midwives and professionals of other disciplines, which play a relevant role from the perspective of midwifery.

Methods: A literature review was undertaken within the databases CINAHL, PubMed, PsycInfo, Cochrane Library and CareLit for publications dating from 2005 to 2015. After a first selection process based on a review of titles and abstracts, in a second step, the relevant literature was identified by reading full-text articles. The following search-criteria were used: German or English language, qualitative research from Western industrialized countries, peer-reviewed articles and those which adopt the perspective of midwives with regard to cooperation with other professionals in the community setting. Articles which focus explicitly on cooperation in the clinical context and thus cannot be applied to the community setting were excluded as well as articles which focus on interdisciplinary learning.

Results: Supporting and inhibiting factors were identified as central topics of the qualitative research literature. The results are to a large extent based on Canadian, Australian, English and Swedish scientific literature. None of the studies focusses solely on the midwives’ perspective; instead, cooperation is always considered from different profession perspectives, especially from the field of health care.

Relevance: Health-care professionals are required to understand the establishment of interdisciplinary cooperative structures as part of their professional competence [4]. This is also important for community midwives who are asked to play an active role as mentioned in the “National Initiative Early Childhood Prevention and Family Midwives 2012-2015” [5].

Conclusions: Further research is needed to identify specific knowledge focusing on cooperative activities of midwives in the field of community care.

Ethical considerations: Approval by the ethical committee of Witten/Herdecke University was granted in 3/2014.

Financing: The study is supported by government funds of the regional office for research and culture of the state of lower Saxony.