WORKING AS A COORDINATOR MIDWIFE IN A TERTIARY ...

professional supervision” (p.13). What if Amiria was ‘unlucky’ and had no husband with
a ‘good listening ear’ when she works shifts and arrives home at unpredictable times?
Irene shares her coping strategies:
When I go home after a difficult experience, I journal some stories because I have
to get the sequence of events and the emotions off my chest, but not often. I think
about things. Sometimes I dream about situations because I am angry and maybe
that is one of the reasons why I cycle because when I cycle I just push the energy
into something else, actually transfer feelings into physical energy. I talk about
things in a general sense with my partner without going into detail. I talk about
my own struggles or what was I struggling with at that time.
In their reflections on professional supervision, Smythe and Young (2008) cite Merton
who wrote “the individual person is responsible for his own life and for ‘finding
himself’” (p.27). Irene has shared how she achieves this. She has found her own answers
to addressing the emotional toll she describes when she leaves work. Her “relationality”
(van Manen) with her partner away from her workplace is part of her emotional
wellbeing (p.104). She has developed coping strategies which she will utilise depending
on circumstances, however like Alice, her sleep is also disturbed at times. Irene travels
back in time to reflect, to analyse and to make sense as her means of moving forward in
her midwifery journey.
Sally explains her coping strategy:
106