Results
A total of 35 doctors participated in the study. Five participants were consultant obstetricians and 30 were non-consultant hospital doctors (NCHDs).
Twenty-nine participants were interviewed with a median time to complete the interview of ten minutes (range seven to thirty minutes). Six participants (all NCHDs) were unable to arrange a face to face meeting so emailed the responses. Thematic analysis was performed on content of interviews or emails until saturation. There were no differences in themes identified by face to face interviews compared to email interviews.
Over half (58% n=20) of the participants were females and 42% (n=15) were males. The majority of participants were aged between 31-40 years. There was one participant under the age of 25 years and two more than 50 years old.
The majority of participants had between five and ten years of experience in obstetrics and gynaecology (range two –twenty years). With regard to years of experience in performing OVD this ranged from less than one year to twenty years, with a median of two years. Participants had a median number of OVD as primary operator of 200 (range 50-1000+). The majority of participants (23/35; 65.7%) said they preferred to use a ventouse as an instrument of choice for OVD, five had no preference and five preferred to use forceps. Most junior trainees (BST3 and HST1/HST2) preferred to use the ventouse (n=17) whereas four of the five consultants reported no preference.
After analysing the data seven themes emerged (Figure 1). Four themes were common to all participants (consultants and trainees) and three themes were specific to the trainees.