Midwives Perceptions on Perinatal Loss Care of Bereaved Mothers at KweKwe General Hospital, Zimbabwe

Abstract

Painful, distressful and discomforting is the caring for women who have experienced perinatal loss and may be very challenging for bereaved women and the midwife as well. This requires a nurturing as well as a professional approach and facets that ate mainly experienced than taught and learnt. Commonly, the area remained unresearched through the delicate intonations it bears and the sacrosanct perceptions surrounding death and loss of life and sacredness the subject. An in-depth qualitative phenomenological study explored the midwives’ perceptions on perinatal loss care of the bereaved mothers. In-depth interviews were used to gather data from a sample of 10 participants who were selected among midwives at Kwekwe maternity unit using purposive sampling. The sample was determined by the data saturation point and the inclusion criteria was of those who had worked at the unit for at least 6 months. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data which gave rise to identification of themes. The findings revealed four emergent themes; knowledge and skills on bereavement care, psychological and emotional support, constraints to offering bereavement care and improving perinatal loss care. Midwives lacked requisite skills and knowledge to care for bereaved mothers, they void of care to bereaved mothers, inadequate psychological and emotional support from the family and midwives was of concern. Constraints were identified as shortage of staff, time, lack of continuity of care and inadequate infrastructure. Recommendations were training of midwives on management of mothers who would have experienced perinatal loss, counselling, improving infrastructure for confidentiality and proper management of the bereaved mothers and probable co-option of the conceptual framework developed in this study. Further research should focus on exploring the views of the mothers themselves since they are the custodians of the perinatal loss.