Women's Length of Stay in a Danish Specialized Unit for Perinatally Bereaved Parents

To describe the clinical characteristics of women admitted to a specialized unit for bereaved parents and to identify the characteristics of women who stayed more than 2 days.

A population-based descriptive study.

A midwifery-led specialized unit for bereaved parents at Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark.

Women with miscarriage (>14 weeks), missed abortion (>14 weeks), termination of pregnancy (>14 weeks), stillbirth, or death of their neonate during the first 48 hours after birth.

We collected information from the electronic health care records for women admitted to the unit from January 2012 through December 2018, including parity, type of loss, gestational age, mode and duration of birth, pain relief, and duration of stay.

From January 1, 2012. to December 31, 2018, 579 women were admitted to the unit. Hospitalization varied from 1 day to 1 week. More women with a loss after 22 gestational weeks stayed for more than 2 days. In multivariate analyses, the hazard ratio (HR) of staying longer than 2 days was 1.3 times greater for primiparous women than for multiparous women (HR = 1.3, 95% confidence interval [1.0, 1.7]) and 2.4 times greater for women with near-term loss compared to women with perinatal loss before gestational week 22 (HR = 2.4, 95% confidence interval [1.7, 3.6]).

Providing unlimited stay at a specialized unit for perinatal loss resulted in variation in length of stay. Primiparous women and women who lost neonates or fetuses closer to term gestation were more likely to stay in the unit for up to 8 days. This may indicate a need for individual support not available in standard care.