Selected aspects of the experience of being an Ontario Registered Midwife practice partner

Abstract

In 1994, Ontario midwives became regulated independent providers of midwifery provincially and organized themselves into practices. At each practice two or more midwives act as partners responsible for overseeing a practice as an independent business. The purpose of this descriptive exploratory study was to describe selected aspects of the experiences of being an Ontario midwifery partner, including the benefits and drawbacks and how decisions are made and conflicts are resolved. Convenience sampling was used to recruit nine participants who met inclusion criteria. Semi-structured interviews were conducted via telephone. Findings revealed partnership benefits and drawbacks, decision-making and conflict resolution strategies and indicated that midwives’ experiences of partnership emerged from having been an associate midwife or past partner. Limitations include a small sample size, a novice researcher and telephone interviewing. Recommendations for further studies emphasized how to best prepare midwives for partnership and the impact of partner workload imbalance on intra-partnership relationships.