Nursing care for parents who have experienced fetal demise: integrative review.
Nycarla de Araújo Bezerra, Cibelle Nayara Sena Dos Santos, Adrian Thaís Cardoso Santos Gomes da Silva and 2 others
PMID 38511784WHAT IT FOUND
Parents bereaved by fetal loss need nurses to validate their grief rather than minimize it.
Care should include both parents, allow time for goodbyes and memories, and use clear, empathetic communication. Nurses need training to support families through this traumatic event.
Key findings
01Parents valued empathetic farewells that allowed physical contact with the baby and participation in rituals like cutting the cord or taking footprints.
02Care often focused solely on the mother, which weakened family support, while fathers felt silenced and expected to be strong without permission to grieve.
03Inadequate communication by healthcare professionals, including avoiding or delaying disclosure of fetal death, was a significant source of distress.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The review included only nine articles, limiting the breadth of evidence. Most included studies were qualitative or descriptive (evidence levels V and VI), so they describe experiences rather than test interventions. The search was limited to publications from 2016 to 2021. Eight of the nine studies were in English, which may limit generalizability to non-English speaking contexts.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret this as evidence that specific nursing interventions improve clinical outcomes. The review synthesizes qualitative experiences and identifies care gaps, but it does not test whether recommended practices reduce grief complications.