Conclusions
insecurity
This study demonstrates that care providers found the birthing room intervention to be valuable and in alignment with their views of factors that support women’s birth physiology. The implementation of the new birthing room challenged the prevailing biomedical paradigm of the labour ward and had the potential to shift established care provider habits from routinised and task-focused behaviours towards integrating the practice and philosophy of being ‘with woman’. This change, aligned with the view of birth reflected in the new room, appeared to be facilitated by care providers’ recognition of the room’s value for women during childbirth. However, a barrier to the integration of the new room as a well-functioning part of ordinary practice was the feeling of insecurity evoked by its unfamiliar design. Another barrier was the perception that this design was not entirely functional in emergency situations and not fully compatible with medical responsibilities. It is evident that the birthing room design must be both aesthetically appealing and functional for care providers to find work satisfaction. We recommend that future design guidance for birth environments incorporate a combination of standardised, functional yet psychologically supportive room design that facilitates women’s birth physiology while promoting a sense of safety and familiarity among care providers.  Furthermore, future research should include interventions aimed at establishing practices that align with the sensitive interplay between the environment, personal experiences, and physiological birth processes.