Practices in antenatal counseling for extremely premature infants amongst European trainees

Abstract

There is no international consensus on content and process regarding antenatal counseling in extreme prematurity. The need for adequate training is increasingly recognized. This descriptive study evaluates current practice in antenatal counseling amongst European trainees using an online survey. Focusing on the process, the majority of respondents did not have a medical consensus guideline. Seven percent of the trainees received some formal training. Focusing on the content, about half of the subjects did not mention any statistics about mortality.

Conclusion: We observed wide variation in actual content and organization in antenatal counseling in Europe amongst European trainees in neonatology.

Keywords:

• Antenatal counseling
• limits of viability
• prematurity

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the participants and organization of the Leonardo da Vinci NOTE (Neonatal Online Training in Europe) project for their cooperation.

Declaration of interest

There was no funding. All authors declare that there is no conflict of interest. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Compliance with ethical standards

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.