Clarene Brown-King PhD RN*

*Corresponding Author: Clarene Brown-King, PhD, RN.

Received: May 03, 2023; Published: May 30, 2023

Abstract

Background: Caring for mothers with perinatal loss can be traumatic even for experienced nurses. Nursing students also share in the experience during their clinical rotations; for them, the emotional distress may affect their clinical performance and influence their decision in nursing. While many studies address professional nurses’ experiences, there is a paucity of research that address nursing students’ experiences during clinical rotations, as they learn to care for patients with perinatal loss.

Purpose: To afford baccalaureate nursing students the opportunity to describe their experiences, ideas, and emotions, while caring for mothers who have perinatal loss; obtain an in-depth understanding of the students’ experiences.

Method: Van Manen’s hermeneutic phenomenology approach was the underpinning in this study. A purposive sample of nine nursing students from Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, Florida, who met the inclusion criteria, participated in one-to-one semi-structured, audio-taped recorded interview.

Results: Major themes of supporting, distancing, learning, suffering; subthemes of relating and hoping emerged.

Conclusion: This study revealed coping strategies, challenges, and consequences that participants faced while they cared for mothers who have perinatal loss, which could have impacted the care they provided. Nevertheless, the students assigned meanings to the experience. Additionally, there is the need for a more active role from clinical faculty, to foster effective coping mechanisms among students, during their clinical rotation.

 Keywords: Perinatal Loss; Baccalaureate Student Nurses

Bibliography

1. Begley C. “I cried… I had to …Student Midwives Experiences of Stillbirth, Miscarriage and Neonatal Death”. Evidence Based Midwifery1 (2003): 20-26.
2. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. “Fetal and perinatal mortality, United States”. National Vital Statistics Reports8 (2012): 1-10.
3. Cody W. “Philosophical and Theoretical Perspectives for Advance Nursing Practice”. Jones and Bartlett, (2013).
4. Crary Pamela. “Beliefs, Behaviors, and Health of Undergraduate Nursing Students”. Holistic Nursing Practice2 (2013): 74-88.
5. Creswell J W. “Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches”. 3^rd, Thousand Oaks (2013).
6. DeBackere KJ., et al. “The Parental Experience of Pregnancy after Perinatal Loss”. JOGNN: Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic and Neonatal Nursing5 (2008): 525-537.
7. Duggleby WD and Williams AM. “Living with Hope: Developing a Psychosocial Supportive Program for Rural Women Caregivers of Persons with Advanced Cancer”. BMC Palliative Care 9 (2010): 8.
8. Durgun Ozan Yeter., et al. “The Effects of Clinical Education Program Based on Watson’s Theory of Human Caring on Coping and Anxiety Levels of Nursing Students: A Randomized Control Trial”. Perspectives in Psychiatric Care 3 (2020): 621-628.
9. Flenardy V and T Wilson. “Support for Mothers, Fathers and Families after Perinatal Death”. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 1 (2008): CD000452.
10. Inati Violet., et al. “A Survey of the Experiences of Families with Bereavement Support Services Following a Perinatal Loss”. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology1 (2018): 54-63.
11. Lincoln YS and Guba EG. “Naturalistic inquiry”. Newbury Park, CA: Sage (1985).
12. Lopez KA and Willis DG. “Descriptive versus Interpretive Phenomenology: Their Contributions to Nursing Knowledge”. Qualitative Health Research5 (2004): 726-735.
13. Luckner John L and Reldan S Nadler. “Processing the Experience: Strategies to Enhance and Generalize Learning”. Kendall/Hunt, (1997). enhance and generalize learning. Dubuque, IA: Kendal/Hunt.
14. MacDorman Marian F., et al. “Fetal and Perinatal Mortality, United States, 2006”. National Vital Statistics Reports 8 (2012): 1-22.
15. Mckenna Lisa and Colleen Rolls. “Undergraduate Midwifery Students’ First Experiences with Stillbirth and Neonatal Death”. Contemporary Nurse: A Journal for Australian Nursing Profession1-2 (2011): 76-83.
16. Moon Fai Chan and David Gordon Arthur. “Nurses’ Attitudes towards Perinatal Bereavement Care”. Journal of Advance Nursing (Wiley-Blackwell)12 (2009): 2532-2541.
17. Denise and Cheryl Beck. Essentials of Nursing Practice. 9^th ed., Lippincott, (2018).
18. Roehrs C., et al. “Caring for Families Coping with Perinatal Loss”. JOGNN: Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic and Neonatal Nursing6 (2008): 631-39.
19. Siegel Irving E and McGillicuddy-De Lisi Ann V. and Educational Testing Service, Princeton, NJ. Parental Distancing, Beliefs and Children’s Representational Competence Within the Family Context [microfoam] / Irving E. Siegel and Ann V. McGillicuddy-De Lisi Distributed by ERIC Clearinghouse [Washing, D.C.] (1980).
20. Smith JS and PR Liehr. “Middle Range Theory for Nursing”. 3^rd, Springer, (2014).
21. Starck PL and McGovern JP. “Theory of Meaning”. Middle range theory for nursing, edited by Smith, M. J., and Liehr, P. R., Springer, (1992): 95-96.
22. Stoltz P., et al. “The Meaning of Support as Narrated by Family Carers Who Care for Senior Relative at Home”. Qualitative Health Research5 (2006): 594-610.
23. Van Manen M. “Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy”. New York Press, (1990).
24. Way D. “Recognizing, relating, and responding: Hospice workers and the communication of compassion”. Thesis, Arizona State University, (2010).
25. World Health Organization. “Newborn Mortality”. WHO, World Health Organization, (2021).

Citation: Clarene Brown-King PhD RN. “Nursing Students Caring for Mothers Who have Perinatal Loss - A Qualitative Study". Acta Scientific Clinical Case Reports 4.6 (2023): 21-28.

Copyright: © 2023 Clarene Brown-King PhD RN. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.