PERINATAL BEREAVEMENT CARE TRAINING FOR NURSES AND MIDWIVES HELD
The psychological outcomes for many parents who experience perinatal loss depend on nursing staff’s ability to provide effective bereavement support. However, most nurses and midwives lack the ability to provide bereavement care and suffer from heavy emotional burden.
Perinatal bereavement is a healthcare problem that may cause serious psychological problems to bereaved women and their families. Depression, anxiety, feelings of failure, guilt, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and suicidal ideation are commonly seen among bereaved parents. 
Perinatal loss is associated with negative pregnancy outcomes, including miscarriage, therapeutic abortion, stillbirth and neonatal death.
Beareved parents depend on a healthcare professionals’ ability to provide effective bereavement support.
In view of the above, the County Government of Nandi in partnership with Kenya Aids Vaccine Initiatives (KAVI-UoN), National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) and Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) held a bereavement care training in Kapsabet for nurses from across the six sub counties. The training programme is intended to assist nurses and midwives in improving their confidence and ability to provide perinatal bereavement care and to relieve the symptoms of secondary traumatic stress (STS) and emotional exhaustion (EE) in the context of bereavement practice.
The objective of the training is to improve the perinatal bereavement care knowledge and skills of nurses and midwives to enhance their confidence and ability to provide perinatal bereavement care and to relieve the heavy emotional burden of nursing professionals and improve their psychological well-being, which is an important guarantee to high-quality perinatal bereavement care services.
Nurses frequently provide solace to patients and their families during times of bereavement, offering a supportive presence and lending a listening ear. Moreover, nurses are instrumental in delivering end-of-life care, ensuring patients’ comfort in their final moments. Collaborating with healthcare members, they attend to not just the physical aspects of pain management but also the emotional and spiritual facets of the end-of-life experience. Nursing’s role in easing grief and navigating loss is fundamental, underscoring the profession’s dedication to holistic, compassionate care.