Recently, I had the honor of being selected as a visiting professor at the National Defense Medical Center in Taipei, Taiwan. This government agency has a funded program of support for one to two visiting nurse scholars per year for the School of Nursing.

Nearly all of the faculty in the School of Nursing have completed their graduate studies (master's and Ph.D.) at universities in the United States. I was invited by Tsrong-Yeh Lee, now the director of Nursing at Tri-Service General Hospital, and associate professor in the School of Nursing at the National Defense Medical Center.

My relationship with her was initially formed during her program of study on qualitative methods at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Nursing several years ago.

At Lee's request, I delivered one presentation on a research methodology for phenomenology and several presentations on perinatal loss. She had requested the content on perinatal loss because programs of support for parents who experience a perinatal loss (miscarriage, stillbirth or newborn death) are just developing in Taiwan.

As part of my visit, I delivered presentations in two different facilities: Kaohsiung Military Hospital and Tri-Service General Hospital, which is part of the National Defense Medical Center.

At both hospitals, it was apparent that the importance of family participation in a patient's hospitalization is recognized and facilitated by staff. In the general ward, each hospital bed is equipped with a chair that reclines into a sleeping cot for >> a family member to stay and assist with care 24 hours a day.

In the neonatal intensive care unit, a family room has four beds for overnight stays. This practice of enabling 24-hour family stays is a nice contrast to practices in U.S. hospitals, where families often are separated from their hospitalized family members.

My presentations on perinatal loss were divided into three areas: an overview on the responses and caring needs of families who experience a perinatal loss; a review of selected national programs for bereaved parents, such as RTS, Compassionate Friends, SHARE and Center for Loss in Multiple Birth (CLIMB), and an illustration of the programs developed by health care professionals in Chicago-area hospitals; and general strategies to implement a program of support for bereaved parents.

The audience at my presentations primarily consisted of nursing faculty, nursing personnel (administrators, specialists and staff nurses) from nearby hospitals and nursing students. For many nurses, this information on perinatal loss was new, and they asked many questions on the cultural relevance of these programs.

For others, this information served to validate their clinical impressions, especially for those mental health nurses who had cared for women experiencing grief complicated by depression after losing a child. These nurses wondered if some of the depression they were observing might be alleviated by instituting programs of support for the parents.

The most enlightening aspect of my visit occurred after I delivered the presentation on the responses and needs of families at one of the hospitals. Just after I had finished the presentation, a nurse in the audience, who herself was a bereaved parent, came forward and shared her story.

Two years earlier, she had experienced the death of her baby, who was born at 23 weeks' gestation. She spoke in Chinese and, although I could not understand what she was saying, I could tell the depth of her pain as she tearfully told us of her experience. The audience was moved to tears as she described the isolation she felt and the unwillingness of her family to let her see her baby or even know her baby's gender.

I later learned through a translator that she recommended the supportive interventions that I was describing. I believe her personal story was more powerful than anything I could have said to the audience and served as a valuable lesson that the grief of parents may be culturally specific, but is universal.

During my visit, I also consulted with Lee and members of her research team, who are embarking on groundbreaking research on perinatal loss in Taiwan. They will evaluate a program of support for parents who have a stillborn infant. Lee and her colleagues will examine the effects of interventions to support bereaved parents that are based on the RTS program.

Preliminary research findings on the responses of Taiwanese mothers to having a stillborn infant have been strikingly similar to the responses of mothers in the United States and lend support for the planned intervention study. This program of research on Taiwanese mothers is an important contribution to the limited research on perinatal loss in different cultural groups.

My visit to Taiwan was exceptionally rewarding. I was able to establish new relationships with nurse scholars. I also learned about perinatal loss among Taiwanese families directly from a parent and from health care professionals. These global relationships and knowledge about other cultures is increasingly important as we care for families from diverse cultural backgrounds.