Several illnesses cause suffering and pre-death grief among close relatives, as in cancer and dementia. This might be the case also at Parkinson's Disease (PD). We aimed at getting grief self-reports of relatives of PD patients using the same instrument (AGS) as in former grief studies to see similarities and differences. Anticipatory Grief Scale (AGS) and questions about background variables were sent to PD caregiver support groups in Sweden to be handed out to the members at their meetings. Close relatives of persons with Parkinson's disease (PD) reported feelings and reactions on the AGS, and the results were compared with those from relatives of dementia patients in a former study also using the AGS. Self-estimations about the duration of illness, the condition at the time for questioning, and the perceived quality of care of the relative with PD were also made. The study showed an overall stressful situation including feelings of missing and longing, inability to accept the terminal fact, preoccupation with the ill, tearfulness, sleeping problems, anger, loneliness, and a need to talk. The PD and dementia groups appeared to show much more anticipatory grief similarities than dissimilarities. The duration of the disease did not influence the grief reactions, which, however, was shown for perceived quality of care as regards irritability and preoccupation thinking of the ill relative. Also the respondents' perception of a bad condition of their relatives showed increased reports on loneliness, a need to talk about the illness, personal dysfunction, and not planning ahead.

A postal survey was sent to close relatives of Swedish patients with ALS and progressive MS to assess preparatory grief according to the Anticipatory Grief Scale (AGS), together with age, relationship, duration of the illnesses, perceived quality of care, present need of care, caregiver burden, and need of support. The relatives in the two illness groups generally responded in similar ways on the AGS, e.g. reporting closeness, preoccupation, tearfulness, and feelings of injustice regarding the illness. More MS relatives agreed on being irritable and wondering about life without the disease; they reported increased competence, but less ability to move ahead with life. The relatives' need to talk to somebody outside the family and the hospital staff was more frequently reported by the MS relatives than by the ALS relatives. Overall, the need to talk correlated to feelings of loneliness, longing, tearfulness, loss of interest in daily activities, worries for the future, irritability and sleeping problems. However, surprisingly many of the ALS and MS relatives reported planning for the future and had discovered new personal resources after the diagnose, possibly indicating an overweight of responders adjusted to the situation and therefore expressing less sorrow.

Frequent caretaking of severely ill, dying, and dead people as well as bereaved close relatives could involve too much stress for emergency personnel to be satisfied with the job situation. Screening for critical aspects for work satisfaction and endurance at ambulance and emergency rooms would provide useful information to the workers themselves, their management, and for pre-hospital acute routines/programs. Two hundred and forty 40-item job-related, postal enquieries on demographical, as psychological, social, economical, and existential work aspects were sent to 26 clinical directors to be assessed by personnel at the ambulance and emergency rooms in Sweden. The response rate was 64%, the majority being nurses and nurse assistants, experiencing a very high, high, or rather high prevalence of severely ill or dead patients at their work place. The hospitals' frequency of severely ill or dead patients predicted a higher mental workload experience in both ambulance and emergency room personnel. More personnel at the emergency rooms compared with ambulance workers expressed time pressure and were less satisfied with their caretaking, two of three reporting their job to be mentally straining as compared with one of three among the ambulance personnel. Change of work due to heavy workload was reported by one in three. The majority thought they could get used to a job with death and grieving, wellbeing however negatively affected. Still, the majority reported good health and little sick leave due to excessive workload. Several critical factors seemed important for job satisfaction among Swedish ambulance workers and personnel at the emergency rooms. Complaints about psychological stress, physically high workload, physical damage, many working hours, low salary, much shift-and night work, better vacation leave, more resources, too little time for recovery, crisis support and guidance, better routines, more explicit care programs including improved bereavement support for relatives, better possibilities for job control, self-efficacy, unit efficiency, and clearer work duties, and a family-non-conflicting job situation could favour work performance in both groups.