Providing emotional care for early pregnancy loss: Development and evaluation of a new training module for healthcare providers

Abstract

Background

Miscarriage is a common life event that frequently causes significant grief and distress. The emotional impact of miscarriage has been shown to be strongly influenced by patients’ and partners’ experiences interacting with healthcare providers during the miscarriage diagnosis and treatment: positive experiences are associated with reduced perinatal grief, whereas negative interactions can aggravate the traumatic impact of the loss. Unfortunately, healthcare providers frequently report feeling ill-equipped and unprepared to provide adequate emotional care for miscarriage. As such, there is an urgent need for effective training material to support healthcare providers in this important care.

Method

Here, we report a quasi-experimental study evaluating the effectiveness of a new training module that we recently developed to empower healthcare providers when providing emotional care for miscarriage.

Results

Using the previously-validated Perinatal Bereavement Care Confidence Scale, we show that this module is highly effective, achieving significant increases in healthcare providers’ knowledge, bereavement support skills, and awareness after completing training. Importantly, the module was effective for each of five different staff roles (anaesthetists, midwives, nurses, obstetricians and receptionists) and for both junior and more experienced staff. Furthermore, at six-week follow-up, HCPs reported using many of the module's recommendations in their ongoing practice.

Conclusion

Altogether, this new training module is therefore an important step towards empowering healthcare providers (in all roles) in providing essential emotional care for this common and frequently highly-distressing life event.