Emergency medical technicians' experiences with unplanned births outside institutions: A qualitative interview study

Hanne Vagle; Gunn Terese Haukeland; Bente Dahl; Vigdis Aasheim; Eline Skirnisdottir Vik

doi:10.1002/nop2.354

Emergency medical technicians' experiences with unplanned births outside institutions: A qualitative interview study

Nurs Open. 2019 Jul 31;6(4):1542-1550. doi: 10.1002/nop2.354. eCollection 2019 Oct.

Authors

Hanne Vagle¹, Gunn Terese Haukeland¹, Bente Dahl², Vigdis Aasheim¹, Eline Skirnisdottir Vik^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Health and Social Sciences Western Norway University of Applied Sciences Bergen Norway.
² Centre for Women's, Family and Child Health, Faculty of Health and Social Sciences University of South-Eastern Norway Kongsberg Norway.
³ Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care University of Bergen Bergen Norway.

Abstract

Aim: To explore emergency medical technicians' experiences with unplanned births outside institutions.

Design: A qualitative interview study.

Methods: Individual semi-structured interviews with 12 emergency medical technicians in Norway. Systematic text condensation was used to analyse the data material.

Results: Analysis showed that there is a mismatch between society's expectations about emergency medical technicians and the reality they encounter in out-of-hospital maternity care, that emergency medical technicians experience a general lack of training in caring for labouring women and that poor communication with other health professions challenges patient safety. The participants expressed how they do their best in caring for both mother and child, in spite of a lack of education, training and competence in assisting labouring women.

Keywords: born before arrival; born unplanned outside institutions; emergency medical technician; experience; midwifery; out‐of‐hospital birth; paramedic; patient safety; pre‐hospital birth; specialist ambulance nurse.