Home Birth in the Opinion of Obstetricians and Midwives: A Survey

Many studies report benefits of planned home births by registered midwives. In the 21st century, there are still controversial views and vivid discussions. This publication presents results from a survey on the opinion of obstetricians and midwives about home birth. An individual self-administered questionnaire was distributed among 26 obstetricians and 60 midwives from 14 maternitycare units in Central Northern Bulgaria and 93 undergraduate students in their last year of midwifery education in 6 universities in Bulgaria. The study instruments were approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at the Medical University – Pleven. Data analysis was performed with Microsoft Office Excel 2016 and SPSS v.21.0. Home births were supported by 26.9% of the obstetricians, 20.0% of the midwives and 66.8% of the students. According to 65.4% of the obstetricians, 23.3% of the midwives and 15.1% of the students, midwives are not qualified enough to provide homecare services at delivery. Only 11.6% midwives and 35.5% students were confident that midwives could give adequate home birth care. This lack of support for home births in all the study groups in our survey can be attributed to organizational factors within the health system, as well as to low self-confidence of midwives and mistrust on behalf of obstetricians.