Parent hospital experiences following stillbirth

Stillbirth is an adverse pregnancy outcome, occurring in approximately 1:160 pregnancies that deeply impacts families and healthcare providers. Best practice guidelines have been established to provide a framework for bereavement care; however, there are still gaps in the provision of care to these parents.

A qualitative research design in the format of a self-administered online survey was used. Purposive sampling was used to recruit participants in two phases-an open phase and a selected phase. Initial survey data were cleaned, resulting in 200 unique survey responses. The open-ended questions were analyzed using inductive content analysis.

The three main themes generated from the open-ended responses were Memory Making, Support, and Medical Decisions. Despite the majority of healthcare providers offering at least one memory making activity and the majority of parents participating in at least one memory making activity, the most common theme parents reported they would do differently was creating more memories.

Despite the current level of support provided by health care providers, potential gaps in bereavement care remain, indicating healthcare organizations and providers may intervene and improve bereavement care practices and parent experiences through consistent implementation and integration of perinatal bereavement care guidelines.