June 22nd saw the release of a new resource to help gather experiences of care from women and families who have experienced maternity bereavement.  This multidisciplinary discussion aims to explore this resource and how it can help to improve care.  

The "Gathering feedback from families following the death of their baby" resource is HERE 

Some things are hard to talk about.  When a woman and a family have experienced the death of a baby during pregnancy its hard to find the right words.  Yet as healthcare professionals how can we improve the care we deliver if we don't tackle the challenging conversations; if we don't ask "how was your care?"  how can we ever learn and improve? How we perceive care as healthcare professionals is very often quite different to how the persons experience of care - we need to have these difficult conversations to truly understand what bereaved women and families need. 

In her recent blog Kath Evans states "When the death of a baby or babies occurs during a pregnancy we know that the care women and families receive stays with them for a lifetime. It’s the ‘little things’ that have a huge impact and Sands (the Stillbirth and neonatal death charity) from their work with families encourage us to do better in this area of care delivery. As professionals the very last thing we want to do is cause further distress to a family when they have already gone through so much by asking about these experiences, yet families have told us they want to be asked sensitively about what made a difference and they also want to share ideas for improvement where they may be needed too" 

The 2014 National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit (NPEU), ‘Listening to Parents after Stillbirth or the Death of their Baby’ study highlighted that we need to listen to parents and to monitor their needs and experiences of care and to act upon that feedback. The Maternity Bereavement Experience Measure (MBEM) questionnaire, due to be released on 22nd June, aims to address this gap.

It's important to realise that its not just Midwives who come into contact with families experiencing loss and this discussion aims to bring all healthcare professionals together to discuss how together we can improve care for bereaved families, how we can use the Maternity Bereavement Experience Measure questionnaire and resource and share thoughts and best practice. So whatever your role, where ever you work please do join us to explore the Maternity Bereavement Measure questionnaire and resource. 

Further reading

To read all of the #LossExp series of blogs please CLICK HERE