Abstract

Maternity staff commonly experience adverse events within their roles. Many, however, report receiving inadequate support. We surveyed the 19 maternity hospitals/units in the Republic of Ireland to find out what staff supports they provided. For each support, they were asked to provide details about how it was provided, to who, and when, and any evaluation of it. We received completed responses from 18 of the 19 maternity hospitals/units. All but one site reported the provision of at least one form of psychosocial support following adverse events, with numbers ranging from 2 to 10. The most frequently reported supports offered were Employee Assistance Programme (n=16); Occupational Health (n=15); Clinical Supervision (n=10); After Action Review (n=9). Varied information was provided about each of the supports within and across sites. While staff listed supports that were available in their hospital, they were unable to provide much detail regarding these, especially about their evaluation, uptake and impact. There was also confusion between the different types of supports, especially around various forms of debriefing. While we have mapped what supports are available, more research is needed to better understand what the most appropriate staff supports are, and what affects whether they are taken up or not.