Empowerment and Burnout of Midwives at the End of Health Emergency From SARS-CoV2: a Cross-sectional Observational Study in Friuli-Venezia Giulia Region

As the fifth wave of COVID-19 comes to an end and the pandemic's countermeasures expire, there is a need to assess the impact of the pandemic on health care providers, especially midwives, as the professionals deputed to promote and protect women's holistic health, in all phases, physiological and otherwise, of the life cycle. The midwife considers the person as a whole, in which the mind-body-culture components interact profoundly. Prevention and containment measures have impacted on midwifery clinical and nursing practices with the mandatory continuous use of personal protective equipments (PPE) and social distancing to protect the patient and the practitioner, effectively hindering the intimacy of the woman-midwife relationship. The impact assessment focuses on two dimensions: learning, investigated as perceived empowerment, and perceived malaise, investigated as burnout. Empowerment has a positive connotation, which can offset burnout, a syndrome that affects the physical, psychological and emotional health of midwives and can have significant negative implications on midwife turnover, patient safety and outcomes, and the efficiency of healthcare organisations.