Perinatal bereavement education standards

The growing need for compassionate bereavement education for all involved in caring for women and their families has been highlighted in recent studies (Heazell et al. 2016, O’Connell et al. 2016, Burden et al. 2016). Staff have identified training and education as key priorities for them in caring for bereaved families (McNamara et al. 2017, O’Connell et al. 2016; Gandino et al. 2017; Agwu Kalu et al, 2018; Doherty et al, 2018a, b). The groundwork for this paper was based upon the Report of the Work-stream on Education and Staff Support under the Chair of Prof. Mary Higgins and presented at the Bereavement Forum, April 2018. This work-stream collated data on the current curriculum on perinatal bereavement education at five out of the six Higher Education Institutions offering bereavement education delivered to medical and midwifery students in Ireland.