General discussion | 195 NQMs instead of locum work in the community. Local and regional collaborations need to be established to support first-year employment contracts and support for all NQMs. In the hospitals, similar leadership is needed to provide support and more stable working conditions for all NQMs during their first year in practice Experienced midwives need to act on their beliefs regarding NQMs in practice. Midwives are crucial actors during the transition of NQMs into practice, both as role models, and in stimulating the development of midwifery expertise. It is recommended that midwives are made aware of the discrepancies between their attitudes and beliefs about NQMs in both communities and hospitals. For midwifery education Midwifery academies in the Netherlands are recommended to include both the socialization of students as members of a specific profession and the subjectification of their students as responsible, reflective, and independent professionals in their curricula.51 Midwifery curricula could focus more on students’ personal resources early in the programme and develop, train, or optimize these personal resources towards resilience, hope, optimism and self-efficacy.52 In developing personal resources, it is recommended that attention is also paid to students’ personal demands, such as setting boundaries and perfectionism, and to stimulate students to efficiently manage these personal demands. Recent research suggests that personal demands play an important part in the effectiveness of the development of personal resources.53,54 In addition, support and guidance in the development of personal resources may help student midwives to be more effective learners during their internships, which may help to make the transition-into-practice easier.53 It is also recommended that midwifery academies train their students in competences required to work in a community or in a hospital. For work in communities, this means learning to work with different clients in maternity care teams in a shift, as well as organizational and administrative tasks.13 For the hospital setting, it means learning additional midwifery skills, learning to work as a member of a multidisciplinary team, and learning to work partly autonomously with women in low-risk situations and partly under the supervision of an obstetrician with women in medium- and high-risk situations.14 Our findings show that NQMs felt ill-prepared to work in these specific work environments. With the introduction of the master’s degree in midwifery in 2023 in the Netherlands, it is recommended that a division of competences for midwives at bachelor or master level be made. For example, basic organizational and collaborative tasks are required at bachelor level for the care of women and for tasks related to the organization of one
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