WORKING AS A COORDINATOR MIDWIFE IN A TERTIARY ...

Experienced midwives will often ‘know’ when a woman is about to birth, they will
recognize the signs of full dilatation and they will often know instinctively when there is
something wrong. Midwifery is a predominantly female workforce and intuition is
predominantly a woman centred trait. Intuition relates to “our experience of the results of
deep cognitive processes that occur without conscious awareness and cannot be logically
explained or reproduced” (Davis-Floyd & Davis, 1996, p.4). Nurses’ decision making
processes in emergency situations were researched by Cioffi (2000) who identified the
use of subjective data by experienced nurses in their decision making processes and the
importance of listening to their inner concerns. Edwards (2004) writes about intuition in
relation to medical error and views intuition as a subliminal signal to one’s consciousness
which shouldn’t be ignored, however he applies this to the ‘going back and checking’
situations rather than utilizing it for clinical decision making in the workplace.
Midwifery ‘knowing’ goes back to being ‘with’ women. The medicalised world is
described by Davies (2007) as a world with just two dimensions within the real world
which is multidimensional and where midwives espouse “a holistic philosophy, in which
we nurture women’s hearts, minds and souls by meeting them with our own” (p.75).
Within this world of complexities of obstetric complications and provision of midwifery
care lies the art of leadership for coordinators. Leaders are working most effectively
when they are able to challenge processes, empower their colleagues, role model how
best to do things, inspire and encourage (Kouzes and Posner, 1995). They write
“knowledge gained from direct experience and active searching, once stored in the
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