From self-compassion to compassionate action: reflecting on ending life of stillbirth care in nursing

Abstract

Nurses’ distress in response to the professional experience of the neonatal loss and stillbirth care is poorly addressed in nursing practice; therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore nurses’ experiences of labour of a stillborn baby. A qualitative approach with ten Registered Nurses from hospital birth units in northern Taiwan was used to investigate the stillbirth care experiences of nurses. Research data analysed by interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) were collected from eight digital recorded sessions of group dialogues, nurses’ responses and feedbacks. Three main themes extracted from data include unfolding the suffering, engrossing in stillborn parents and demonstrating compassionate actions for the stillborn baby. Unfolding the suffering includes shame, guilt and disenfranchised grief. Engrossing in stillborn parents includes perceiving the mother’s suppress sadness and empathising with the father’s anger. Finally, demonstrating compassionate actions includes fulfilling the parents’ needs to say goodbye to their stillborn baby and saying a personal goodbye to the dead baby. The finding of this study shows that the reflective group provided the space for nurses to unfold their suffering, share their emotion, and develop practical wisdom in caring for stillborn baby and the parents. The experience of nurse group conducting the reflecting dialogues could be a expository strategy to promote the nurse to provide the compassionate care actions.