Exploring Newly Qualified Midwives’ Lived Experiences of Out-of-Hospital Births Through Voice Messaging and Interviews

Abstract

When newly qualified midwives in Germany commence work in free-standing birth centres, a setting dissimilar to the hospitals where they trained, they undergo a period of orientation in which they must broaden their skills and knowledge. Using a hermeneutic phenomenological framework, this study explored their skill and knowledge acquisition in the first 9–12 months using two methods of data collection—voice messaging and interviews. As there appeared to be important differences in what was shared using these different methods of data collection, further analysis was undertaken. This paper presents a secondary analysis of a larger study on the training of newly qualified midwives in out-of-hospital birth settings. In this secondary analysis, the aims were (a) to compare and identify distinct aspects of the same lived experience as they were revealed in different forms of data collection; and (b) to draw on philosophical inquiry to deepen our understanding of professional learning and identity formation for newly qualified midwives. Participants included fifteen newly qualified midwives who were each interviewed three times in their first year working in a free-standing birth centre. In addition to this, they also left a total of 123 voice messages, in which they shared emotionally profound experiences. Data analysis focused on exploring the similarities and differences of the same stories of attending a birth told through voice messaging close to the actual experience and again in an in-person interview up to several months later. Voice messaging captured immediate, visceral reactions. The unstructured interviews revealed reflective, contextualised perspectives, bringing social, environmental, and wider contextual factors into view. Together, these findings show how temporality and data collection method shape the disclosure of meaning in lived experience and illustrate the value of using multiple methods to expand interpretive depth in hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry. This research advances hermeneutic phenomenological research methods by demonstrating that multiple methods of data collection can provide distinct layers of meaning in lived experience accounts.