Background: Health care personnel's experiences of grief and painful emotional involvements in situations facing perinatal death has attracted woefully little research and attention. In order to provide high standards of care for patients and their families, health care personnel needs to express their emotions in these situations in an adequate way. Aim: The main aim was to explore how midwives, obstetricians and nurses experience perinatal death and what characterize these experiences. Methods: This review study was designed through systematic examination methods to detect articles in English and Scandinavian language that describe midwifes', obstetricians' and nurses' experiences with perinatal death and factors that characterize these experiences. Only ten articles met these inclusion criteria. A qualitative method was used to describe and comprehend the phenomena. Results: The following categories emerged from the data: (1) emotional implications, (2) change in culture, (3) education and training, (4) hierarchical issues, (5) support and learning from others. Emotional implications when facing perinatal death were reported in all the ten articles. Conclusions: This study revealed that withdrawal from the situation and denial were common reactions to perinatal death among health care personnel. These reactions may lead to a lower quality of care for the bereaved parents. Findings in this study indicate that the problem is related to culture and to accept this as a problem and challenge. Emotional reactions among health care personnel to perinatal death must be fully acknowledged and normalized.
Objective:The aim of the present study was to investigate mothers' own experiences of skin-to-skin contact (SSC) with their newborns immediately following moderately premature birth.Design: Mixed method, survey and focus groups interviews.Participants: Thirty-nine mothers giving birth at gestational age 32 0 -34 6 weeks responded to a quantitative questionnaire. Nine of these mothers participated in focus group interviews. Method:In order to obtain information about mothers' own experiences of immediate SSC with their moderately preterm newborns after birth, quantitative and qualitative data were collected. Using a mixed method approach, descriptive quantitative data were combined with rich qualitative data from focus group interviews to offer a more comprehensive picture of the mother's own experiences. Key concepts were information about SSC, feeling of safety and mother-infant bonding. Results:The results from both the quantitative and qualitative part of the study were highly congruent: the mothers perceived that they had been given sufficient information by midwives and nurses about SSC following premature birth. According to questionnaire responses and interviews, the mothers' perception of safety during SSC was enhanced by the continuous presence of a nurse from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Moreover, the mothers felt that SSC was important during the first hours after birth, both for mother-child bonding and for normalization of the birth experience. Conclusion:The results of our study demonstrate that SSC is a useful method to normalize the birth experience and enhance mother-child bonding following a moderately premature birth. We argue that midwives, nurses from NICU and physicians should support and promote SSC immediately following premature birth.
Background Prolonged latent phase of labour often results in a traumatic birth experience. Prolonged labour is associated with more operative deliveries, haemorrhage, fetal asphyxia and poor birth experience. Women with prolonged labour in a former pregnancy more often demand caesarean section in the next, due to their negative birth experience. “Proactive support of labour” is an alternative method, developed to counteract prolonged labour. There are little research and no randomized controlled study that compare proactive to standard labour support. Methods/Design A prospective, non-blinded, randomized, single-centre, clinical trial where we compare proactive support to standard support of labour in a university hospital setting. Inclusion criteria: latent phase of labour, non-pathologic pregnancy. Robson group 1, with painful contractions, and fully effaced cervix, with 1–3 cm dilatation. Exclusion criteria: induction of labour, breech presentation, twin pregnancy, multi-parity, conditions that require extended surveillance before and/or during labour. Primary outcome: spontaneous, uncomplicated vaginal delivery. After inclusion, women randomized to proactive support of labour will stay at the hospital and have one-to-one midwife support. If no progression during the next 1–2 hours, amniotomy and/or oxytocin stimulation will be started. The control group will adhere to the standard procedures for labour support: expectance until established regular contractions and 4–5 cm cervical dilatation, and then one-to-one midwife support. Discussion The idea of proactive support of labour is to initiate early intervention when there are signs of slow progress in order to avoid protracted labour with exhaustion of the mother, the uterus and prolonged stress of the foetus. Proactive support of labour may represent a useful method to improve labour support in nulliparous women. However, evidence based on randomized controlled trials are needed in order to know whether proactive support of labour is comparable or superior to standard care. A randomized, controlled trial is described; challenges and possible clinical implications are discussed. Trial registration The Proactive Support of Labor Study (PAF) ClinicalTrials, NCT03056313. Registered on February 17, 2017.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.