More videos on how to use the Dreams of You Comfort Items and Bathing a Fragile Baby below.
SGM has created a virtual support plan for the nurses, medical team members, and patients walking through a perinatal loss who may be outside of the SGM service area (Ohio and SE Michigan) or in the event that in-person services are restricted. We are still here and hope to collaborate with you to provide any support we can, and we look forward to serving families through our in-person support services soon. We also hope that this need to provide a virtual support plan for staff and patients can be used in areas throughout the world where in-person support may not be readily available. During COVID-19, SGM Volunteers remain available to provide in-person services throughout Ohio and SE Michigan. We have protocol in place to protect the health and safety of our volunteers and the patients and staff we serve.
Here are the things we still CAN do from a distance:
• Please offer the patient the option to connect with SGM either at the time of their hospital stay or for follow-up support. It would be good for the nurse to call SGM to start a care/support plan for the patient, just as we would do for in-person services. Patient name and email and/or phone number is sufficient.
• Virtual Staff Support – You can call to discuss concerns or make a plan for any patient experiencing loss. We can still provide collaboration and telephone support for nurses, even if patient does not want to connect directly with us. In those cases, you can call without giving private identifying details for the patient, and we will be happy to support the nurses and medical staff as they provide support and offer memory-making options to the patient. We want to be there for you to talk through your concerns.
• We will be providing bags of Dreams of You Comfort Resources, marked with age and gender, to all of our partnering hospitals with memory-making items and instructions for the staff and family to help companion them through this time with their baby. This way, they will still receive most of the tangible resources they would get if we were there in-person. Please give these items to the families.
• Virtual Patient Support – Options for providing telephone, Skype (sufficientgraceministries), Zoom, or Facetime support will be available. Families can speak with a certified SGM Comfort Doula/Companion to talk them through memory-making and answer questions the family may have about grief, celebrating their baby, burial/cremation, memorial ideas, etc. We also have extensive webpages on our website with this information as well as brochures in each of the Dreams of You Comfort packages.
• Please encourage the family to take pictures and if the nurse is willing/able, please assist them in capturing images either with a digital camera or family’s cell phone. SGM will still offer our professional editing/re-touching services for any photos. A plan for submitting images for us to edit will be available on our website under the Virtual Support link.
• To set up telephone or online support with a patient, please call 419-278-7640 (for support in the hospital, you may use the mobile phone on the voicemail or on the call sheet at your hospital) or email: sufficientgraceministries@gmail.com. We may direct you to a more local volunteer if you are located in another area.
It is an honor for us to partner with the hospital staff to serve grieving parents as they create memories with their babies. We look forward to the time when we can serve in-person again. For those in areas outside of our in-person services area, we are happy to ship items to you and to work with you as a resource to serve your patients in whatever capacity we can.
Dreams of You Comfort Packages and How to Use Memory-Making Items
Bathing Fragile Baby