Perinatal loss has a strong emotional impact on health professionals working in maternity units. We aimed to study the impact of this experience on health professionals' language. We analyzed the answers of 162 health professionals (physicians and non-medical staff) who described their reactions to perinatal loss. A linguistic analysis was performed using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software. Associations between language and burnout were studied. Words typical of a psychological shock reaction were used more by non-medical staff than by physicians. Participants who used pronouns, optimistic words, future tense verbs, and cognitive words registered lower levels of burnout. Clinical implications of the results are discussed.
Keywords: burnout; healthcare professionals; maternity unit; perinatal loss; psycholinguistic analysis.