Abstract:
This paper focuses on exploring the experiences of midwives in Ghana who have worked in diverse settings over time.
It explores how midwives’ personal experiences across time, place and in diverse contexts impact their care for women during
childbirth. The paper describes the forms of knowledge held by midwives. It presents how the experiences of midwives reflect
their professional and personal practical knowledge landscape.
Methods: Using narrative inquiry, the experiences of four midwives working in private maternity homes were explored. Being
guided by the three-dimensional narrative inquiry space of temporality, sociality and place, and the concept of relational ethics, a
meaningful relationship was built with participants over a period of five months. Several tape-recorded conversations were held
with each participant, multiple other interactions were recorded as field notes and in a journal. Each tape-recorded conversation
was transcribed and used to construct narrative accounts that reflected participants’ experiences as lived and told. Interim narrative
accounts were shared with participants to ensure that the accounts reflected their experiences. Analysis: To identify resonant
threads across all four narrative accounts, each account was read multiple times with intentionality and with the research objectives
in mind.
Results: Three distinct professional knowledge landscapes for midwives were identified. These were the professional knowledge
landscape of working in rural communities, urban communities, and private maternity homes. Two concepts of knowledge:
knowledge for midwives and midwives’ knowledge, were identified on each of these professional knowledge landscapes.
Conclusions: Education of midwives should consciously take into consideration the different knowledge landscapes in which
midwives in Ghana practice.
