Malpractice in midwifery: A cross-sectional retrospective study from Turkey

Abstract

Medical malpractice could result from personal reasons such as negligence, carelessness, ignorance, lack of skills, and insufficiency in patient care. The aim of the authors of this study to determine the knowledge, views, experiences and observations of midwives about malpractice. The study was carried out between April-September 2013, on 75 midwiwes working in three different hospitals in a city of Turkey. The semi-structured interview form developed by researcher has been used. It has been determined that the causes of malpractice are mostly thought by midwives as inability and inexperience in profession (90.7%), carelessness (86.7%) and lack of attention (40%). It has been determined that 24% of the midwives has witnessed a faulty medical practice and 5.4% of midwives make medical errors. The most observed types of medical errors encountered by midwives; umbilical cord prolapses due to amniyotomy prematurely (42.7%), damage to the anal sphincter during episiotomy (62.7%) and forgetting foreign object after repair of episiotomy (32%). At the end of the study has appeared should be giving importance to vocational training and postgraduate service training for reducing medical errors and protection from malpractice midwives.

Keywords

• Malpractice
• midwifery
• care
• incorrect application
• medical error

References

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