An evaluation of midwives' knowledges, thoughts, observations and experiences about malpractice

Medical malpractice is defined as damage resulting from failure to apply the standard, lack of skills or failure to apply the necessary to patient of health care personnel. Midwifery which one of the occupations undertaking important duties in carrying out of health services is a profession practiced from very ancient periods of history. Any failure or negligence that midwives live while performing their duties may cause malpractice claims. This research done descriptively to determining and evaluate information thoughts, observations and experiences on malpractice of midwives. The universe of there search was consisted of employees with the title "midwives" in the delivery and postpartum services of three hospital located in center of Adana. Consents of the participants were taken regarding participation in the study. The data collected by the data collection form developed by the researcher and were analyzed with SPSS 17.0 program. As a result, has been observed that more than half of midwives not know malpractice (53,3 %). It was determined that midwives see as a general source of error in the occurrence of malpractice most inability and inexperience in profession (90,7 %), carelessness (86,7 %) and lack of attention (40,0 %). It was determined that 24,0 % of the midwives' observations and 5,4% of midwives' make medical errors themselves. At the and of the study has appeared should be giving importance to vocational training and postgraduate service training for reducing medical errors seen in midwifery and protection from malpractice midwives. Also was concluded should be investigate evidence- based practice and should be included in routine midwifery initiative. Of this study is considered that can contribute to similar studies in terms of put forward informations, thoughts, frequency of observation and experience on medical errors that may cause malpractice claims of midwifes and to be a source for guiding other studies on the subject. Keywords: Malpractice in Midwifery, Medical Malpractice, Midwifery.