Awareness and Significance of Teamwork in Midwifery Practice among Midwives in Tertiary and Secondary Healthcare Facilities in Port-Harcourt, Nigeria

A better understanding of the processes of collaboration between midwives who work in the birthing centers, and hospital-based obstetricians, family physicians and nurses may promote cooperation among professionals providing maternity care in both institutions. The study investigated the awareness and significance of teamwork in midwifery practice among midwives in tertiary and secondary healthcare facilities in Port Harcourt. Three research questions were raised and the study adopted the cross-sectional descriptive design. The target population consists of 100 midwives in the University of Port Harcourt teaching hospital and 20 midwives in Obio Cottage hospital. The sample size of 120 was derived from Taro Yamane’s formula. The instrument for data collection was a self-designed questionnaire. The data collated were analysed using frequency count and simple percentage, and chi-square. The findings revealed that the midwives have good knowledge on the significance of teamwork with 75.4%, 1.75±0.434 mean score and standard deviation respectively. The study also found that the healthcare facilities had a significant statistical relationship (p-value =0.041). The finding also indicated midwives had attended no or few seminars on the awareness of teamwork with a mean score of 1.92 and standard deviation of 0.072. The study recommended that workshops and training should be made available to midwives in the secondary and tertiary hospital. The study concluded that the entire potential of teamwork will only be realized if the hospital management, head of nurses and midwives encouraged and continuously improve the standard of awareness of teamwork practice among midwives in the health facilities