Navigating Care After a Baby Dies: Improving Nursing Care for the Bereaved Parents

This article is based upon two systematic reviews of qualitative research, both evaluating more than 1100 articles from 1966 to 2006. Both of the systematic reviews address parents’ experiences of hospital care surrounding foetal and early infant loss (Gold, Dalton & Schwenk, 2007; Gold, 2007). The term “perinatal death” will in this article refer to foetal deaths in the second and third trimester of pregnancy as well as “neonatal deaths” occurring in the first 28 days after birth (Gold, Dalton & Schwenk, 2007, p 1157). Keywords : nursing, perinatal death, parents’ experiences, practice recommendations, qualitative research.