Taking post-mortem pictures

[Double-Helix]

Is this a practice at any of your facilities? I know it's pretty common in NICU and L&D as part of a remembrance package, but what about in your pediatric facilities?

We had a patient pass away recently and after I had gotten him washed, removed the tubes and lines, combed his hair, dressed him and wrapped him in a blanket, he looked better than he had in months. I thought it might be a good idea to take a picture in case the family wanted one for later, but I wasn't sure if we had a policy for this or if I could get in trouble, since patient photos are a big issue of privacy.

We did do handprints and footprints in ink for the parents to take with them, and they had family photos taken a month or two before as part of one of our "pictures of hope" programs for kids with cancer. I'm just curious what you do at your facility in regard to photos of a child after he or she has passed.

[hiddencatRN, BSN, RN]

I work in the ER so when a patient dies it's a ME case and we do not remove tubes or wired. We clip hair and do hand and foot imprints, but have to get ME permission for that. We're also apparently supposed to tell families not to touch the patient too much but how the heck that works, I do not know. We let families hold their deceased children. Not sure how the rest of the hospital handles it.

[umcRN, BSN, RN]

I work in the ER so when a patient dies it's a ME case and we do not remove tubes or wired. We clip hair and do hand and foot imprints, but have to get ME permission for that. We're also apparently supposed to tell families not to touch the patient too much but how the heck that works, I do not know. We let families hold their deceased children. Not sure how the rest of the hospital handles it.

I went to an infant bereavement conference once and this is something they talked about with the ME cases. Really sad. I can't quite remember how they suggested handling the situation but at least allowing family time to hold is important. really sad though, there was a parent speaker there and her baby died from SIDS and the hospital they were at were so to the rules they almost didn't even let the parents hold.

[hiddencatRN, BSN, RN]

Yeah, it's sad. Every family asks if we can remove the tubes and wires and we can't.Then they get tracked by DHS for a year. I had a kid with a minor injury and police came to take a report and we were all so confused about why until the mom mentioned they'd lost a baby recently to SIDS. So the police had to come and file a report to make sure there was no pattern. I get why SIDS needs to be treated as a possible crime, but in the cases where it truly is SIDS and not abuse, how devastating it must be, on top of already having feelings of guilt, to have that guilt essentially validated...Anyway, sorry for the tangent!

[NicuGal, MSN, RN]

We also use Lay Me Down to Sleep for our NICU and PICU. We have a huge peds/baby bereavement group at our hospital. Many parents will not want to look at the pictures right away, but all the families eventually do want them. We have a policy for all this, also we use hospice a lot for our kids, as does the PICU. They do a lot of things for the families as the patient is dying.