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Compassionate Detachment: Managing Professional Stress While Providing Quality Care to Bereaved Parents

This phenomenological study examines the lived experience of professionals who have assisted parents after the sudden unexpected death of their child from sudden infant death syndrome, sudden unexpected infant death, and sudden unexplained death in childhood. Interview material was analyzed using Creswell's six-step approach to qualitative data. Three types of involvement emerged as themes: early enmeshed emotions, emotional detachment, and compassionate detachment. Compassionate detachment marked a balance between emotional engagement with the newly bereaved parents and cognitive detachment from the trauma. All professionals mentioned relying on a philosophy of life and death as a means of coping with the stress of these cases. Having a solid cognitive belief structure seemed to be a protective factor when working with the sudden and unexplained death of a child. A case is made for the need for organizations to mitigate the deleterious effects of stress and burnout among health and emergency workers by providing psychological first aid and support to individuals that regularly respond to unexplained child deaths.