Assessing the effectiveness of an educational workshop designed to improve caring behaviors of Midwives at Public Hospitals in Jordan

Despite caring being an important aspect of health-care providers' work, there is a growing concern about the lack of suitable caring behaviors in childbirth settings in developing countries. The objective is to design, implement, and evaluate an educational workshop to improve the caring behavior of midwives working in the labor ward of a large Jordanian public hospital. This is a pre- and post-interventional study. A workshop focused on teaching specific caring behaviors was held for 20 midwives who worked in the labor ward at one public hospital in Jordan and evaluated against women's ratings of midwives' caring behaviors and satisfaction with care after the intervention and 3 years later. Significant increases were observed in the overall scores of midwives caring behaviors and women' satisfaction 6 weeks and 3 years after the intervention compared with prior scores. Women postintervention perceived midwives to be more caring than women before the intervention (P = 0.001). There were significant positive changes from preintervention scores at 6-week postintervention and 3-year postintervention on seven out of eight items of the “caring behavior scale.” Increased overall satisfaction scores were observed 6 weeks and 3 years after the intervention compared with the scores before the intervention (P < 0.001). The study can inform midwifery educators on the importance of teaching and learning of caring behaviors to future midwives in their preservice preparation. The program that was developed can be used with some modification, as part of midwifery students' educational program or as an in-service program for employed midwives.