Helping Health Care Staff Deal with Perinatal Loss.

Dealing with the psychological issues involved in perinatal loss exposes the medical, nursing, and midwifery staff not only to parents' distress but also their own feelings of impotence and frustration. This often leads to inadequate management of the situation, which may have long-term deleterious effects on parents and affect staff personally and professionally. Thus, mental health professionals should not only address their interventions to parents, but to staff as well, potentiating the latter's role as mental health providers. The skills needed for this kind of task involve creativity and flexibility, as well as the capacity to adapt traditional training to the active participation needed in dealing with perinatal loss. The present paper is based upon the author's 15 years' experience in consultation/liaison in this field and describes the work carried out based on case discussion, group work, and, specially, video-recorded interviews with parents and staff accompanied by written material providing guidelines for management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]