Rural Rounds: Navigating Perinatal Loss as a Rural Health Professional
Session Description
Perinatal loss has profound and lifelong impacts, and providing bereavement care can be an overwhelming responsibility for health professionals. This session will explore strategies that support psychologically safe care in the context of perinatal loss, including trauma-informed approaches and presence-based responses in an acute care setting. In addition, the session will outline strategies for maintaining professional boundaries when providing bereavement care in a rural setting, where personal relationships may coexist with conventional patient-provider relationships.
Rural Rounds presentations are tailored specifically for the unique practice context of rural health professionals. Sessions feature relevant topics, exemplative case studies and an opportunity to connect with fellow learners. If you practice in or support rural communities in British Columbia, we would love to have you join the Rural Rounds community!
Format: Rural Rounds sessions are delivered via Zoom in a webinar-style format. Speaker(s), moderator and presentation slides will be visible on screen, and learners can submit questions using the Zoom chat function.
Rural Provider Social Time: Grab your coffee and join the session link at 7:45 a.m. PT to connect with fellow rural health professionals before the presentation. This is a great opportunity to introduce yourself, chat, and build community before we begin!
Can't Join Live? The webinar will be recorded and posted to the Rural Rounds Recordings page to watch on-demand after the event.
This session will be led by Zoe Stratis and moderated by Dr. Jennifer Kask.
Zoe Stratis, MPCC-P, is a Master Practitioner of Clinical Counselling and Certified Pregnancy and Infant Loss Coach, and the founder of Wilder Way Counselling. Her work in perinatal bereavement care began with personal loss, which shaped her commitment to supporting both grieving families and the clinicians who care for them. Zoe has delivered training to hospitals including Lions Gate, as well as to the Butterfly Support Network. Alongside her teaching, she provides 1:1 counselling, volunteers in her community, and has developed The Burnout Recovery Protocol for Healthcare Workers. Drawing on both lived experience and clinical training, she helps health professionals deliver compassionate, trauma-informed care to families navigating pregnancy and infant loss.
Rural Rounds Learning Objectives
- Discuss up-to-date rurally relevant medical education to rural health professionals across British Columbia, especially family physicians and specialists
- Demonstrate a team-based and multidisciplinary approach to rural medicine through a series of didactic and interactive presentations
- Review cases and medical approaches from rural communities, specifically tailored to the unique circumstances of rural health professionals
Session Learning Objectives
- Identify specific phrases that support psychological safety versus phrases that unintentionally cause harm when responding to a family following perinatal loss.
- Differentiate the clinical “fixing” impulse from trauma-informed presence, and apply a presence-based response when supporting a bereaved family in an acute care setting.
- Describe strategies for maintaining professional boundaries and managing dual relationships when providing bereavement care to families you may know personally, as is common in small and rural communities.
This webinar is for the professional development of health professionals. As an accredited learning activity, this session is intended to provide an environment that is conducive to presenting complex information, asking questions and the sharing of personal experience among colleagues.
The content is tailored to a medical audience and is not intended as public health communication. Any reproduction of the session or provided materials in part or full requires the explicit approval of UBC CPD. Interest from media can be directed to media.relations@ubc.ca.
This project was developed and is operated by the UBC Faculty of Medicine's Division of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in partnership with the Rural Coordination Centre of BC. Funding for Rural Rounds was provided by the Joint Standing Committee on Rural Issues, a joint committee of the Doctors of BC and BC Ministry of Health.
The Division of Continuing Professional Development, University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine (UBC CPD) is fully accredited by the Continuing Medical Education Accreditation Committee (CACME) to provide CPD credits for physicians. This activity meets the certification criteria of the College of Family Physicians of Canada and has been certified by UBC CPD for up to 1.0 Mainpro+® Certified Activity credits. Each physician should claim only those credits accrued through participation in the activity.