Experiences of the Nursing Personnel in the Face of Perinatal Death

Abstract

Introduction: Health professionals are primarily trained to receive life; therefore, providing care for women with offspring or newborn loss becomes a difficult task, fraught with feelings and emotions. Perinatal death is a complex situation with a strong impact on women-mothers and their families.

Objective: To analyze the existing literature regarding studies on the experiences of the nursing personnel in the face of perinatal death.

Methods: To carry out the systematic review of the literature, a search was made in the PubMed, EBSCO, CINAHL, Scopus, SciELO and Dianet databases, from February to April 2020. The search terms used were mortinato [stillbirth], muerte perinatal [perinatal death], enfermería [nursing] and experiencias [experiences]. Articles in English and Spanish, published from 2005 to 2020, were included. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) flowchart was used as search strategy. As an initial result, 476 articles were obtained, fourteen of which were selected because they met the selection criteria.

Conclusions: The experiences of nursing professionals documented in the collected and analyzed studies emphasize the necessity to improve professional training to accompany bereavement, as well as communication and accompaniment strategies. The analyzed researches report contradictory experiences, ranging from considering perinatal losses as difficult situations to deal with, to positive perceptions that describe, as a privilege or honor, accompaniment in these difficult moments for women-mothers and their loved ones.