Date of Award

2018

Document Type

Capstone

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

Committee Chair

Yvonne Smith

Abstract

Women and families widely report dissatisfaction with miscarriage care received in the emergency department (ED). Nurses in the ED are not formally trained in principles of perinatal bereavement, including meeting the complex psychological needs of clients experiencing the loss of an early pregnancy. Nurses may lack the confidence, preparedness, and knowledge needed to care for these clients holistically. This project hypothesized ED nurses’ perceptions (knowledge, confidence, and preparedness) would improve subsequent to education and implementation of an evidence-based framework for care. Emergency department nurses’ perceptions (knowledge, confidence, and preparedness) of care significantly increased after education and implementation of an evidence-based education framework for care. There was a significant increase in the nurses’ post-survey perception of knowledge (paired t-test 2.4398, P-value 0.01106, M= 3.038462, SD= 0.958364) compared to pre-survey knowledge (M= 2.653846, SD= 0.8458041). There was a significant increase in the nurses’ post-survey perception of confidence (paired t-test 2.5754, P-value 0.008157, M= 3.269231, SD= 0.9615692) compared to pre-survey confidence (M= 2.769231, SD= 0.9922779). There was a significant increase in the nurses’ post-survey perception of preparedness (paired t-test 1.9174, P-value 0.03334, M= 3.076923, SD= 1.055389) compared to pre-survey preparedness (M= 2.692308, SD= 1.086986). Keywords: fetal loss, miscarriage, spontaneous abortion, pregnancy loss, perinatal loss, emergency department, emergency room, nurses, healthcare professionals, clients, patients, experiences, and perceptions.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Download

Included in

Nursing Commons

Share

COinS