For Physicians, Nurses, and Counselors

NOTE: These topics are intended for health professionals and are not appropriate for parents or other non-medical personnel

Health practitioners and counseling professionals may know little about intrauterine death, its causes, its frequency, and parental needs following such an experience. This is in part due to limits of the medical and scientific information regarding intrauterine death, but more to the lack of access to the information that does exist. WiSSP's experience with stillbirth assessment and compilation of medically relevant data provides professionals with information that may help to address questions surrounding a stillbirth and thus to better serve families who experience such a loss. It is our hope that availability of this information online will increase the number of adequately assessed stillborns and will aid in the establishment and maintenance of other comprehensive stillbirth assessment service programs elsewhere.

At This Time, WiSSP Will Not Be Accepting New Referrals.

We encourage providers caring for families that have experienced a stillbirth to continue to collect information, especially placental pathology reports, autopsy, and laboratory studies and to refer families that have questions regarding a stillbirth or second trimester loss to a maternal fetal medicine specialist and/or medical geneticist who will be able to make use of that information.

To find a genetic counselor anywhere in the country, you can search on the National Society of Genetic Counselors website: http://www.nsgc.org/page/find-a-gc-search

To find a maternal fetal medicine specialist, you can search on the Society for Maternal Fetal Medicine website: https://www.smfm.org/members

Stillbirth Evaluation Packet

The WiSSP Protocol

With WiSSP's guidance, physicians and nurses can follow through with comprehensive etiologic investigation of stillborn infants: