The Hospice Palliative Care Association (HPCA) was established in 1987 by hospices in South Africa who felt the need for a national body to share best practices and to promote palliative care services in South Africa. HPCA supports member hospices in providing palliative care to people of any age with a life-limiting condition. HPCA has the further aim to ensure access to palliative care in settings other than member hospices. Many projects were launched over the years to influence policy, and to educate medical practitioners, nurses, social workers, theologians, and community caregiver; and to develop services. A key initiative was the development of a mentorship program to assist organizations to develop accredited palliative care services in South Africa. This article highlights some of the HPCA projects funded over the years by the Open Society Foundations' International Palliative Care Initiative.

This qualitative study involved action research to explore one woman’s narrative of awareness, emotions and thoughts during treatment in an intensive care unit (ICU). The overarching aim is to increase insight into the thoughts, feelings and bio-psychosocial needs of the patient receiving treatment in ICU. Data was collected by means of narrative discourse analysis. Literature on the psychosocial and spiritual implications of ICU treatment is limited, and often patients have no recall of their treatment in an ICU at all. Documenting the illness narrative of this individual case is valuable as the participant could recall a certain amount of awareness, thoughts and emotions. These experiences included delirium, anxiety, helplessness, frustration and uncertainty. Once sedation was decreased, the patient’s consciousness increased and she was confronted with thoughts and emotions that were unrealistic and frightening. It was found in this study that the opportunity to share a narrative on the emotions and awareness during treatment in an ICU had cathartic value and the participant suffered little symptoms of post traumatic stress syndrome, often associated with long term treatment in an ICU. Further research on this topic is necessary to improve ICU treatment, not only on a physical level, but with emphasis on the psychosocial and spiritual needs of the patient.

Complicated grief refers to a prolonged state of grief and indicates the inability of the client to incorporate the death into his or her life. Few social workers in South Africa assess the possibility of complicated grief as a contributing factor to impaired social functioning. This can be as a result of limited knowledge, ignorance and/or insufficient skills on the part of the social worker to assess and identify complicated grief. In this article, the researchers tabulate some of the models and approaches to bereavement and discusses its applicability to complicated grief. Specific attention is given to the Dual Process Model (Stroebe & Schut 1999) and the Task-Centred approach (a social work approach to therapy) in an attempt to develop a model for complicated grief intervention. This article furthermore proposes the Complicated Grief Intervention Model through the integration of the Dual Process Model and the Task-Centred approach while drawing on intervention techniques from other therapeutic approaches. OPSOMMINGGekompliseerde rou verwys na 'n verlengde staat van rou en impliseer 'n onvermoë by die klient om die dood van 'n geliefde in sy/haar lewe te integreer. Gekompliseerde rou word deur min maatskaplike werkers as bydraende faktor tot verlaagde maatskaplike funksionering geassesseer. Dit kan toegeskryf word aan beperkte kennis, ignorering van/of ontoereikende vaardighede by die maatskaplike werker in die identifisering en assessering van gekompliseerde rou. Die outeurs tabuleer sommige van die rouberadingsmodelle en -benaderings in hierdie artikel en bespreek die toepaslikheid daarvan op gekompliseerde rou. Spesifieke aandag word aan die Tweeledige Prosesmodel (Dual Process Model) (Stroebe & Schut 1999) verleen, asook aan die taakgesentreerde benadering ('n maatskaplike werkbenadering) in 'n poging om 'n model te ontwikkel vir gekompliseerde rou intervensie. Die artikel beveel aan dat die Gekompliseerde Rou Intervensie Model (GRIM) deur middel van die integrasie van die Tweeledige Prosesmodel en die taakgesentreerde maatskaplike werkbenadering aangebied word, terwyl intervensietegnieke van verskeie terapeutiese benaderings benut word.

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Critical illness, admission to an intensive care unit, and prolonged hospitalization all impact on the psychosocial functioning of an individual. This article highlights my own experience of a critical illness in an autoethnographic study thereby attempting to add knowledge to the scarcity of research from the patient's point of view. By writing this article, I was able to construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct my emotions, behavior, and the sequence of events in order to understand the impact of my critical illness. With this article I hope to invite healthcare professionals into my world of critical illness for better understanding of the patient's experience.