TWO NEW RESEARCH STUDIES OPEN

Have you or do you know anyone who has considered doing fetal reduction after multiple embryo transfers? The National Perinatal Association is hosting a focus group meeting at which woman will participate in crafting guidelines for medical personnel to teach them how to provide emotional support for women who are undergoing fetal reductions. This action research will bring the words and ideas of women to assisted reproduction physicians for the purpose of developing appropriate protocols for supported decision making regarding fetal reductions in multifetal gestation. Presently many families make these decisions privately and have no opportunity for debriefing or sharing bereavement if they have chosen to reduce.
 
The meeting will be held on November 3rd, 2010, in Washington DC. Grant funding is being sought to provide stipends and possibly help offset travel costs. For more information, please contact Kristy Love, Administrator, National Perinatal Association at klove@nationalperinatal.org

Parents wishing to assist physicians and nurses with the end of life process in the neonatal intensive care unit are sought.

The Sonoma State University Research Team wishes to interview parents who have had an infant die in the NICU. The goal of this research is to assist the health care team with appropriate language, behaviors and interventions that should be used when explaining to parents that their infant has a life-limiting condition. Using parents as experts may ease some the conflicts that at times occur in the NICU when the team feels that the infant should be receiving dignified and loving end of life palliative care and families are not ready to withdraw or withhold life sustaining technologies. For information on participating, please contact Dr. Anita Catlin at catlin@sonoma.edu

This is the research site for Dr. Anita Catlin. Dr. Catlin is a nurse researcher and professor of nursing from California who specializes in perinatal ethics. She has a nurse practitioner master’s degree, a doctorate, and a certificate in ethics consultation. She has published extensively and serves as ethics editor for the journal Pediatric Nursing, has an ethics column in Advances in Neonatal Care, and serves on the editorial board of Journal of Perinatology. She is the past president of the Nurses Subsection of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities, served on Medical Advisory Board for the Intersex Society of North America, is past secretary of the National Perinatal Association, a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, past-president of the Sonoma State Sigma Theta Tau chapter, and past instructor in the Johnson and Johnson Maternal Child Leadership Institute. Anita serves on the 10 member ANA Council of Ethics and Human Rights that writes the Code of Ethics for Nursing. She been funded by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Nurses Foundation, the National Perinatal Foundation and Lambda Gamma Sigma Theta Tau for her research in perinatal ethics. In 2001 she received the Model of Care Award for the Neonatal End of Life Protocol from the National Perinatal Association. The National Association of Neonatal Nurses has recognized Anita with the Research Contributions Award (2005) and the Outstanding Achievement in Neonatal Nursing Award (2008). She co-chairs a hospital ethics committee and consults in the U.S. and abroad on neonatal end of life care.  Anita was recently invited to serve on the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology Committee on Ethics. She can be reached at catlin@sonoma.edu