Perceived job demands and resources of newly qualified midwives working in primary care settings in the Netherlands | 35 I still experience humour as a coping mechanism, to help me deal with feedback or work with a demanding client. (C5) Personal demands Aside from personal resources, a new theme occurred. The urge to prove themselves was experienced as a personal demand rather than as a personal resource. Perfectionism was also mentioned as a personal demand. That you wrote down a huge amount of words in a detailed text about what had happened. That other people know what you did during your shift and I always prepared myself for the upcoming shift. And before I started a consultation with a client, I read all the reports about this client.. That costed me a large amount of energy; I was exhausted. (C4). Furthermore, participants reported that they tend to worry about their performance. I was educated abroad. So I felt I had to prove myself, you know. .... it took a while before I had a job as a midwife in the Netherlands. And, after a while, you become insecure…I had a strong feeling that I have to prove myself. (A2) My pitfall is that I cannot let go of the thoughts about the things I did not do right. That I continue to worry. (C1) DISCUSSION We found that Dutch NQMs who work in primary care, perceive working as a locum midwife as highly demanding. In particular, although NQMs felt well prepared for providing care for women, they considered themselves ill prepared for the pressures and dynamics of working as a locum midwife. The self-employed status as a locum midwife requires working in different practices and causes fluctuations in workload and (the number of) working hours. Dutch NQMs also perceive organizational aspects of the job, for example practice administration as highly demanding. Certain aspects of the job are perceived as both a job resource and a job demand. For instance, providing care is a job demand when it comes to decision making and working with different client populations; however, NQMs also consider it a satisfying aspect (job resource) when clients indicate they are satisfied with the provided care. Colleagues, too, are important job resources for NQMs. However, colleagues are sometimes perceived as a demand as well in their role as employer. Working autonomously, too, was mentioned as job demand (sometimes scary when there is no colleague nearby) and job resource (the joy of the experience of providing care for women in a homebirth setting).
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