Bereavement Care for Childbearing Women and their Families : An Interactive Workbook

For many bereaved parents, the care provided by healthcare and birth practitioners has a crucial effect on their response to a loss or death. Designed for practical application, this interactive workbook helps practitioners deliver effective bereavement care to women, their partners and families. It includes numerous activities, reflective exercises, case studies, and recommendations to help engage the reader and get them thinking. On completing the book, readers will be equipped with the fundamental skills to support childbearing women, partners, and families who have experienced childbirth-related bereavement.

For many bereaved parents, the care provided by health professionals at birth – from midwives to antenatal teachers – has a crucial effect on their response to a loss or death. This interactive workbook is clearly applied to practice and has been designed to help practitioners deliver effective bereavement care.

Providing care to grieving parents can be demanding, difficult and stressful, with many feeling ill equipped to provide appropriate help. Equipping the reader with fundamental skills to support childbearing women, partners and families who have experienced childbirth-related bereavement, this book outlines:

• What bereavement is and the ways in which it can be experienced in relation to pregnancy and birth
• Sensitive and supportive ways of delivering bad news to childbearing women, partners and families
• Models of grieving
• How to identify when a bereaved parent may require additional support from mental health experts
• Ongoing support available for bereaved women, their partners and families
• The impact on practitioners and the support they may require
• How to assess and tailor care to accommodate a range of spiritual and religious beliefs about death.

Written by two highly educated, experienced midwifery lecturers, this practical and evidence-based workbook is a valuable resource for all midwives, neonatal nurses and support workers who work with women in the perinatal period.

This book is suitable as a text for BSc and MSc courses in Midwifery; BScs courses in Paediatric Nursing; and for neonatal and bereavement counselling courses.