A Boost of Confidence: Improving Perinatal Bereavement Care

Practice Problem: Perinatal loss can have a profoundly distressing impact on families. Nurses play a crucial role in supporting care during this challenging period and must be confident in perinatal bereavement care. PICOT: The PICOT question that guided this Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Scholarly Project was, in inpatient hospital Maternal Child Health (MCH) nursing staff (P), does implementing a standardized perinatal bereavement care checklist (I), compared to current practice (C), improve nurse confidence in perinatal bereavement care as evidenced by the Perinatal Bereavement Care Confidence Scale (PBCCS) (O) in eight weeks (T)? Evidence: Ten evidence-based articles were included in this DNP Scholarly Project, including six cross-sectional studies, one non-experimental study, one descriptive qualitative study, one expert opinion, and one systematic review study design. The body of evidence supported standardizing perinatal bereavement care to improve nurses’ confidence. Intervention: A standardized MCH Perinatal Bereavement Care Checklist with Quick Tips was implemented to improve nurse confidence. The PBCCS was the validated tool used to compare nursing confidence before and after implementation over an eight-week period. Outcome: There was a significant improvement in post-implementation (80.49%) nurse confidence in perinatal bereavement care compared with pre-implementation confidence (29.27%). Conclusion: The implementation of a standardized MCH Perinatal Bereavement Care Checklist with Quick Tips demonstrated clinical significance in improving nurse confidence in delivering perinatal bereavement care.