It’s every parent’s nightmare – stillbirth and perinatal death. But how do such tragic events affect the obstetricians (OBs) attending the delivery?

Apparently, even doctors medically trained in childbirth can be traumatized by deaths of infants they delivered. OBs are trained to deal with new life and delivering good news. But it seems some lack the training to deal with death.

A survey by researchers at the University of Michigan shows that about 1 in every 10 OBs (approximately 80%) has thought of giving up obstetric practice at one point because of the emotional difficulty in dealing with tragic cases of delivery. Emotions the OBs have to deal with are guilt, anxiety, and stress.

About 15% of pregnancies end in miscarriage before the 20^th week of gestation. In such cases, the survival chance of the baby is almost nil. Other pregnancies may go to full-term but for one reason or another, result in stillbirth. Other cases result in perinatal deaths, that is, infants do not survive beyond the first year (though most perinatal deaths occur within the first few weeks of delivery).

Every year, an OB will perform, on the average, 140 deliveries. It is expected that they would encounter cases of difficult deliveries resulting in infant death. When a delivery ends tragically, the main focus is on the needs of the family. However, the emotional toll of such a case on the medical staff, be it an OB or a midwife, is often overlooked.

Aside from guilt, OBs suffer from anxiety over lawsuits. It seems that stillbirth is the second most common ground for lawsuits against OBs in the US. The first is neurological damage to a surviving baby during delivery.

For many OBs, dealing with death is not simply part of the job. Suggestions to help emotionally devastated OBs include training in dealing with death and bereavement, informal gatherings among OBs to discuss problematic cases, as well as meeting with bereaved parents.

Physical abuse? Broken family? Emotional neglect? Can these childhood experiences affect your health as an adult?

Actually they can! Not only psychologically but also physically.
The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study is a research study that evaluated the relationship between different types of childhood trauma and health outcomes later in life.

Findings of the study already published almost 10 years ago showed that there is a strong relationship between childhood trauma and adult risk health factors. The data of the study were collected from over 17,000 adult participants.

To find out how your childhood experiences are influencing your current health status, you can actually do a self-evaluation and find out your ACE score by following this link.

Sources:

American Journal of Preventive Medicine May 1998; 14(4): 245-258

The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study