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Obstetrics and gynaecology
Research
PARENTS 2 Study: a qualitative study of the views of healthcare professionals and stakeholders on parental engagement in the perinatal mortality review—from ‘bottom of the pile’ to joint learning
  1. Danya Bakhbakhi1,2,
  2. Christy Burden1,2,
  3. Claire Storey3,
  4. Alexander Edward Heazell4,5,
  5. Mary Lynch1,2,
  6. Laura Timlin1,2,
  7. Katherine Gold6,
  8. Dimitrios Siassakos1,2
  1. 1 Centre for Academic Women’s Health, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
  2. 2 Women’s Health, Southmead Hospital, Bristol, UK
  3. 3 ISA, International Stillbirth Alliance, Bristol, UK
  4. 4 Maternal and Fetal Health Research Centre, School of Medical Sciences, Faculty of Biological, Medicine and Health, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
  5. 5 Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, St. Mary’s Hospital, Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester, UK
  6. 6 Department of Family Medicine, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Danya Bakhbakhi; db12202{at}bristol.ac.uk

Abstract

Objective Engaging bereaved parents in the review process that examines their care before and after a perinatal death might help parents deal with their grief more effectively and drive improvements in patient safety. The objective of this study is to explore whether healthcare professionals would accept or support parent engagement in the perinatal mortality review process.

Design Qualitative focus group interviews. Transcripts were analysed with an inductive thematic approach.

Setting Two geographically distinct tertiary maternity hospitals in the UK.

Participants Five focus groups were conducted with clinical staff including midwives, obstetricians, neonatologists, nursing staff and chaplaincy services.

Results Twenty-seven healthcare professionals unanimously agreed that parents’ involvement in the perinatal mortality review process is useful and necessary. Six key themes emerged including: parental engagement; need for formal follow-up; critical structure of perinatal mortality review meeting; coordination and streamlining of care; advocacy for parents including role of the bereavement care lead; and requirement for training and support for staff to enable parental engagement.

Conclusions Healthcare professionals strongly advocated engaging bereaved parents in the perinatal mortality review: empowering parents to ask questions, providing feedback on care, helping generate lessons and providing them with the opportunity to discuss a summary of the review conclusions with their primary healthcare professional contact. The participants agreed it is time to move on from ‘a group of doctors reviewing notes’ to active learning and improvement together with parents, to enable better care and prevention of perinatal death.

  • neonatology
  • obstetrics
  • stillbirth
  • neonatal death
  • perinatal mortality review
  • qualitative research

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-023792

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors DB drafted the manuscript and was involved revising the manuscript critically for important intellectual content. DS, CS, AEH, ML, CB, KG and LT were involved in revising the manuscript critically for important intellectual content. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. CB is the grant holder, DB is the principal investigator and DS is the chief investigator and guarantor.

    • Funding This work was supported by the Health Foundation, grant number 7700. DB receives salary support from the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Doctoral Research Fellowship. CB receives salary support from the NIHR Academic Clinical Lectureship. AH receives salary support from Tommy’s and the NIHR Clinician Scientist Fellowship.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent Not required.

    • Ethics approval This study has ethical approval from the UK Health Research Authority (Integrated Research Application System (IRAS) 220468). Date of IRAS approval: 15 February 2017.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data sharing statement Supplementary quotations are included in the supplementary files. No additional data available.