The Universities of Manchester and Central Lancashire in collaboration with Sands, the stillbirth and neonatal death charity, are undertaking a survey of parents who have experienced the death of a baby. We have recently carried out a similar survey of over 3,000 midwives, obstetricians and pathologists together with 750 parents who had experienced a stillbirth. We now want to study parents’ needs for counselling and support from professionals after neonatal death as well; so far we have responses from over 170 neonatologists.
We need your views and experiences so that we can improve the care given to parents after their baby dies. The reason for improving care is that appropriate investigations may help parents understand why their baby died and help us understand more about what causes neonatal deaths. Ultimately, we want all parents to have the best care possible. When the results of this research are presented we intend to use quotations from these questionnaires – these responses will be anonymised. This study has recieved ethical approval from the University of Manchester ethics committee (Ref 09392).
We acknowledge that discussing the death of a baby is not an easy thing to do and can raise emotional issues for all individuals concerned. Sands offers support to health care professionals as well as families; a helpline is available on 0207 436 5881 helpline@uk-sands.org for anyone affected by the death of a baby.
We expect that this questionnaire will take approximately 20-30 minutes to complete. If you have any queries, please contact me on alexander.heazell@manchester.ac.uk or 0161 701 6968 or Dr Alexander Heazell, Maternal and Fetal Health Research Group, 5th floor (Research), St Mary’s Hospital, Manchester, M13 9WL.
Thank you in advance for your help with this important project,
