Specialist training offered to just half of healthcare staff looking after bereaved families
As Baby Loss Awareness Week continues, MFR is investigating what can happen when patients aren't treated sensitively.
Last updated 12th Oct 2022
Training in bereavement care is offered to just 49% of healthcare workers who will help to look after families after the loss of a baby.
Research from the charity Sands shows more than three quarters of NHS boards and trusts across the UK offer it to midwives, but for ultrasound practitioners, A&E workers, paramedics, and student neonatal and paediatric nurses, that falls to 40%.
Some boards and trusts say no training is available at all.
Importance of sensitive language
As part of our coverage of Baby Loss Awareness Week, one woman from Glasgow has told us the language used by a doctor at Paisley's Royal Alexandra Hospital after her miscarriage was devastating.
She said: "When they were checking me, he kept calling it 'tissue matter' and asking if it had passed, and I was screaming inside, 'that's my baby!'"
"Yes, I suppose in medical terms, it is classed as tissue matter, but for 12 weeks we had nurtured this tissue as our baby, and we had started to make plans.
"In your head, you're going to have this baby, and you have visions of what he or she is going to look like."
"A few nights before, we had viewed a house, and I'd chosen the baby's room. When I was in hospital, going through the miscarriage, we decided that we couldn't move into that house anymore, because I would just keep looking at that room, and imagining the baby we never had.
"If the doctor had been really caring, and asked me how I was, rather than being very matter-of-fact, I probably would have coped better at that time."
Jaki Lambert, the Scotland director at the Royal College of Midwives, told MFR: "One throwaway comment can be so important to that full experience for that person.
"One word might trigger something with somebody, which to another is a completely innocuous term.
"But that's why it's so important - language is so key to how we care, and how we communicate."
A spokesperson for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said: "We provide training to staff from SANDs and SIMBA to ensure that everyone knows how to provide the best and most sensitive care to families in these difficult and distressing circumstances."
READ MORE: Baby Loss Awareness Week: The Stories
READ MORE: Bereaved parents facing postcode lottery during baby loss
Threat of strike action
It comes as the Royal College of Midwives in Scotland ballots its members on potential strike action, after members "overwhelmingly" rejected the Scottish Government's offer of a 5% pay rise.
The four week vote runs from September 29 to October 27.
A recent survey, carried out by the union, showed 7 out of 10 midwives are considering leaving the NHS, with half saying they rarely had enough staff to provide safe care to women.
Jaki Lambert from the RCM said: "For 75% of our members polled to be saying this, that is really, really scary.
"This is not midwives not loving being a midwife. It's a vocation, and a job that you are passionate about, and we all go through a lot to become midwives."
She said one of the main concerns is about a lack of educators within the profession, to train less experienced members of staff.
"44% of our members in that survey said they had not been able to access their statutory training in the workplace. That's just the basics, to be able to continue being employed.
"That isn't the additional education, the time to reflect, the time to learn from events.
"Bereavement care is everyone's business, so it's essential that everyone feels confident and able to provide that care."