WORKING AS A COORDINATOR MIDWIFE IN A TERTIARY ...

minimal time during their interviews addressing what it feels like when they hide their
emotions, and how they manage when they leave their workplaces. Instead, each
coordinator chose to look ‘outwards’ with her focus on the wellbeing of women rather
than ‘inwards’ on herself. The long term repercussions for coordinators who conceal their
emotions are unknown.
The coordinators’ passion for midwifery focused care is very real in my study, reflecting
Davies’ (2007) text with its focus on midwives passion for providing woman centered,
midwifery focused care in their workplaces. The constraints described by Walsh (2007)
are evident in the stories of coordinators in my study and reveal their constant ‘juggling
acts’ as they try to maintain safe care and midwifery focused care within their
medicalised institutionalized workplaces.
The work of Smythe et al., (2009) and also Edwards (2004) on intuition and ‘knowing’
bears great relevance to my study. Coordinators reveal their preparedness and courage to
utilize all their midwifery ‘knowing’ to achieve the outcomes they believe in within the
stories they share.
The leadership skills of coordinators in my study reflected the findings in texts by
Malloch and Porter - O’Grady (2005), Kouzes and Posner (1995) and Smythe and Norton
(2007). Coordinators revealed they were unafraid to speak out, to advocate for women, to
challenge decisions, to empower colleagues, to play their roles of leadership as they
concealed their true feelings and to draw the strands of situations together for
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