How Clinicians Develop Confidence in Their Competence in Performing Aspiration Abortion

Abstract

In this article we explore how nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and nurse midwives in California (collectively referred to as clinicians) developed confidence while learning to provide vacuum aspiration abortion. We interviewed clinicians (n = 30) who worked in reproductive health care settings and had participated in a large abortion-training study. Although the training had moral and political significance for the trainees, in this article we focus on their experience of skill development and how they gained confidence and competence in aspiration abortion, a procedure typically performed by physicians. We argue that confidence is not one dimensional. Understanding the diverse ways in which clinicians arrive at confidence might inform health care training and education generally. By examining attained competency from the clinicians’ perspectives, we continue the discussion within the social science of health care and medicine about how clinicians know what they know and what expertise feels like to them.