Attitude of midwives to further education

As the largest group of health care experts working in a wide range of medical facilities, the nurses and midwives are more and more considered by governments and public health organizers the key source of providing reformatory strategies. This indubitable manifests the need of well-prepared and sufficiently flexible nurses and midwives accepting full responsibility for their work. A midwife is a person who after being enrolled in the midwifery education programme properly acknowledged by the state in which it is provided, successfully completed the prescribed studies of midwifery and obtained the required qualification so that she could become a registered midwife or midwife with valid licence for performance of the midwifery. The fields of study should be prepared in such a manner so that the nurses and midwives could take active part in realization of changes that are related either to the planned transformation or already ongoing transformation of the health care not only in our country but also abroad since it is obvious that the demand of health care is currently growing in whole Europe. By realizing the education in fields of General Nurse and Midwife according to the new curriculum we may contribute both to quality improvement of qualification of general nurses and midwives and to their approaching the European standards, which is a prerequisite for future free movement of nurses in the united European labour market. The qualifying programme also enables the so-called Euro-registration and obtaining a licence for performance of their work in EU member countries. The goal of the work with the topic of ``Midwives{\crq} Attitude to Further Education{\crqq} was to find out the midwives{\crq} attitude to further education. I stipulated a hypothesis as follows: ``The midwives are not interested in further education.{\crqq} This hypothesis was not validated. I ran the research based on questionnaires distributed among midwives in the gynaecological-obstetric clinic in Jindrichuv Hradec, Ceske Budejovice and Tabor. I preferred the method of the questionnaire since it provides large amount of data in short period and it is fully anonymous. The results of the research clearly stated that midwives are interested in further education but according to many respondents further education is not available to midwives at their workplaces. Another fact demonstrates the positive approach of midwives to further education. More than half of them has been already attending some professional courses or enrolled at the university. The results of the research will be used for better midwives{\crq} awareness of possibilities of further education and for facilitation of their access to this type of education