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Reproductive Grief Care: Giving Permission to Grieve

Course Details

Contact Hour(s): 0.0

Available Until: 3/17/2023

Non-Member Price: $50.00

ARIN Member Price: FREE

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Approximately two million couples experience reproductive loss every year in the United States. A fetal demise is often during an ultrasound procedure which can be an emotionally traumatic experience for the patient/couple and must be communicated with delicacy by all those providing the medical. Reproductive grief reactions in comparison to traditional types of mourning experiences (i.e. death of a parent or sibling) have been associated with more chronic mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, post-traumatic distress, substance abuse, eating disorders, and diminished or distressed attachment with subsequent children. Patients and their families often report a lack of emotional validation and minimization of their grief by the healthcare providers they encountered during or shortly after the loss. Nurses and medical providers often cite a lack of knowledge, inexperience in using effective perinatal bereavement communication skills (e.g. fear of saying the wrong thing), and negative emotions concurrent with compassion fatigue as the reasons for their emotionally avoidant or irreverent behaviors during a perinatal loss. Utilizing a patient's heartrending account of their pregnancy loss experience, pertinent research highlights, and interactive polling with the participants, reproductive grief care and the culturally competent communication surrounding the disclosure of the pregnancy loss to a patient is uniquely presented.