Midwives’ perceptions of the performance- and transition into practice of newly qualified midwives. A focus group study | 139 NQMs’ wellbeing in practice and thereby the quality of care that they provide. Furthermore, being a commissioner hindered experienced midwives in taking responsibility for NQMs’ wellbeing in practice. Therefore, the adequacy of the temporary employment contracts and locum employment for NQMs must be reconsidered. We recommend that midwifery academies prepare their students for the situations they will encounter in practice, the need for continuous learning in practice and the time and effort that the transition into practice will take. The RDM (Royal Dutch organisation of Midwives) should address NQMs’ need for support and the barriers that experienced midwives met in practice due to the locum status of NQMs and should initiate a discussion within the profession about arranging and facilitating support for NQMs. The RDM needs to recognise the flaws of the locum position for NQMs and the effects of the absence of experience levels within Dutch midwifery on the wellbeing of NQMs. Limitations A limitation of our study might be the purposive sampling of our participants. All participants were interested in this topic. Therefore, there might be more variance in the perceptions among experienced midwives than we have explored. Another limitation is the sole focus on experienced midwives’ views on NQMs in this study. Therefore, the outcomes of this study do not represent a view of all team members that NQMs meet in practice. For the hospital setting, the findings were based on a small sample and the sample did not include the perceptions of employers and other team members. Due to these limitations, the outcomes of this study should be treated with caution. For community-based midwifery, colleagues are also commissioners. Therefore, in this capacity they also represent the employers’ view on their experiences with NQMs. CONCLUSION The differences in experienced midwives’ expectations of NQMs and what these experienced midwives face in practice seemed to depend on the NQMs’ temporary working contracts and working context, rather than the generational differences that experienced midwives mentioned. Dutch experienced midwives prioritised their work with pregnant individuals and the organisation of their practice above supporting NQMs. Midwife-to-midwife relationships for NQMs were perceived as important; however, in practice, they were informally organised or lacking. By taking responsibility for the wellbeing of NQMs and for their support within the profession, both experienced
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