Midwife empathy and its association with the childbirth experience: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: Although pregnancy and childbirth comprise a life-course that most midwives experience, whether their own experiences of childbirth resonate with other women during childbirth remains to be determined. In this study, we therefore characterized midwives’ empathic capabilities and defined their underlying factors. METHOD: We conducted a cross-sectional study with data from 464 midwives in Guangdong, China, that were collected through the “Chinese version of the Jefferson Scale of Empathy for Health Professionals (JSE-HP).” This questionnaire contains sections related to midwife demographics and delivery characteristics. We then implemented multivariate logistic regression analysis to identify empathy-related factors. RESULTS: Our analysis revealed 303 (65.3%) participants in the high-empathy group while 161 (34.7%) were in the middle-empathy group. Compared with the reference groups, these results indicated that higher empathy was associated with an elevated educational level (OR, 1.83; 95% CI, 1.04–3.25), high monthly salary (OR, 2.30; 95% CI, 1.11–4.80), and no shift work (OR, 2.89; 95% CI, 1.09–7.63). The odds of a high empathy score were higher for midwives who experienced two childbirths (2.27, 1.11–4.66) and for those who had children under the age of 3 years (2.81, 1.34–5.92). CONCLUSION: Midwives possess a moderate-to-high level of empathy, and the greater the number of childbirths they experienced and the younger their children, the higher their reported empathy score. This study contributes novel information regarding the empathic behavior of midwives toward women who give birth in China. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12884-022-05309-3.