Sociology for Loss Support: Incorporating sociological concepts into bereavement support trainings for medical professionals

• In Event: Designing for Equity: Implementation and evaluation of programs across the health care, welfare, and justice sectors

Abstract

Families experiencing miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant loss have a marked lack of social support because of social norms around death, the death of children, and the end of pregnancy. The presenter for this short talk is a sociologist who trains obstetricians, midwives, chaplains, and other birth workers in bereavement support in addition to training bereavement doulas (medical paraprofessionals who support families experiencing miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant loss). This sociologist incorporated several sociological concepts into a major bereavement training – including “social scripts”, “fundamental causes of health inequalities”, “ritual”, and “bridging and bonding social capital.”
The presentation will focus on the benefits of such an approach for healthcare workers, such as greater cultural competence and communicative team-building power, and for sociologists, such as direct application of research toward the common good. This presentation will also address key issues facing such integrative and applied work, such as unintelligibility of social concepts to general audiences and the occasional distaste for such community work found in some parts of academia. The presentation includes data in the form of feedback from participants in this sociologically informed bereavement support training.
Takeaways from this presentation include how sociologists can incorporate major social concepts into healthcare trainings; how healthcare professionals can seek out and find sociological resources; and how sociologists can enter spaces with a lack of social support – such as perinatal loss – and work for a more equitable society.

Author

• Abigail Jorgensen, Augustine Institute