Lived experiences of healthcare personnel in supporting parents around neonatal death: encounters, challenges and meaning

Objective To explore healthcare personnel’s (HCP) lived experiences of caring for dying newborns and supporting bereaved parents in neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), drawing on relational, ethical and organisational factors.

Design Qualitative study using hermeneutic phenomenology. Semistructured, in-depth interviews analysed thematically to interpret the meanings embedded in participants’ narratives.

Setting Three tertiary NICUs in the UK.

Participants Eight female HCP (five nurses, three doctors) with 3–20 years’ (median=12 years) NICU experience.

Results Experiences were strongly shaped by temporality and clinical trajectory. Expected deaths (gradual decline) enabled preparation, continuity of carer and opportunities for closeness and memory-making, whereas unexpected deaths (sudden deterioration) heightened moral distress, complicated communication and constrained what could be offered to families. Four themes described how optimal experiences were pursued: (1) facilitating parent–infant closeness, (2) providing comprehensive family support, (3) communication and interpersonal engagement and (4) an emotionally intense experience for HCPs.

The study revealed an overarching phenomenon—creating an optimal experience for parents as an implicit coping mechanism for HCP. As they cared for a dying newborn and its family, it helped them achieve a sense of accomplishment as well as the strength to power through the distress and anguish.

Conclusions The study highlights the relational foundation of neonatal end-of-life care, showing that HCPs’ well-being and quality of parental support and care provided are closely linked. Recognising this interdependence may inform training, supervision and organisational design to strengthen compassionate and sustainable NICU bereavement care.