Bereavement Counselling: Parents

(asked on 7th October 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that relevant professionals across health services receive training in the identification of psychiatric illness in parents who have experienced pregnancy and baby loss.


Answered by
Helen Whately Portrait
Helen Whately
Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 19th October 2020

Training programmes for healthcare professionals must meet the standards set by the regulatory body for their profession.

Whilst not all curricula may necessarily highlight a specific condition, they all nevertheless emphasize the skills and approaches a healthcare practitioner must develop in order to ensure accurate and timely diagnoses and treatment plans for their patients.

Curricula for specialities and roles that regularly treat pregnant and post-partum patients will contain competencies relating to understanding and identifying the psychological and mental health impacts of pregnancy, birth and baby loss, and assessing the health of women.

An example is outlined in the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s ‘Standards for competence for registered midwives’ requirement: providing care for women who have suffered pregnancy loss which is available at the following link:

https://www.nmc.org.uk/globalassets/sitedocuments/standards/nmc-standards-for-competence-for-registered-midwives.pdf

Employers in the health system are responsible for ensuring that their staff are trained to the required standards to deliver appropriate treatment for patients.

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