Dealing with Perinatal Loss: Understanding Staff Attitudes and Needs Towards Bereavement Care when Perinatal Loss Occurs

Background: Perinatal loss is very common in maternity settings. Bereavement care has to be offered in the most sensitive way to bereaved parents. Therefore, it is important that staff are supported and appropriately trained around bereavement care provision and the memory-making process to demonstrate knowledge, competence and confidence to bereaved parents. 

Problem description: Staff education around all aspects of bereavement support and memory-making is necessary to provide a high standard of bereavement and to ensure bereaved parents leave the hospital with a completed memory box. 

Methodology: Action research was used in this project in conjunction with the PDSA-cycle. Both action research and the PDSA-cycle are used in healthcare settings to improve quality of care. Data was collected via a survey questionnaire. 

Process: Data was collected over 4 weeks and 63 responses were logged thereafter. The platform survey monkey generated frequencies and percentages for each question. Content analysis was used to analyse open-ended questions. 

Results: A good overview of staff knowledge and skills around bereavement care and memorymaking was recorded and gaps in staff support were identified. The results were presented to and discussed with senior management to ensure awareness of staff needs around bereavement support provision. 

Conclusion: The research findings are consistent with current literature. The findings provide a perfect opportunity to plan and develop future action research cycles to improve bereavement care and bring chance to the organisation. Using action research methodology and a questionnaire for data collection was proven to be effective in this study.