BACKGROUND:
Student midwives often encounter emotionally complex situations during clinical placements, including caring for women and families affected by perinatal loss. This experience can significantly impact student midwives' emotional wellbeing, clinical confidence, and professional development. Despite the prevalence of perinatal loss in maternity care, how student midwives experience and process these events needs to be explored.

OBJECTIVES:
This systematic review aimed to explore and synthesise the lived experiences of student midwives who have provided care to women and families experiencing perinatal loss, with a focus on identifying their emotional, educational, and professional challenges.

METHODS:
The review is registered in PROSPERO and involves a comprehensive searching of the electronic databases CINAHL, Scopus, and Medline. Following the search, two independent reviewers screened by title and abstract prior to full text review against predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Studies that met the eligibility criteria were included for quality appraisal, data extraction, thematic analysis and synthesis.

RESULTS:
Interim results show student midwives can feel unprepared caring for women experiencing perinatal loss. A challenge appears to be communicating sensitively and being unsure of the appropriate language. Support from bereavement midwives or similar roles is valued. Education is a critical need, with targeted workshops and toolkits helping to build students’ self-awareness and confidence. The emotional impact is that students are expressing professional distress, anxiety, and fear.

CONCLUSIONS:
Understanding the experiences of student midwives in perinatal loss care is vital for improving educational frameworks, clinical support systems and potentially workforce sustainability. The research will highlight the need for proactive strategies to better prepare and support students in navigating emotionally challenging aspects of midwifery practice.

KEY MESSAGE:
Student midwives are the foundation of the future midwifery workforce. Supporting students through emotionally complex experiences like perinatal loss is critical to fostering a resilient, compassionate, and competent profession aligned with the ICM’s vision of “One Million More Midwives”. Poster session 3 (Group B)