The Forgotten Mourners

Abstract

Health care providers often experience the death of patients in their care, which can lead to grief reactions. If not adequately addressed, grief can lead to burnout, compassion fatigue, and psychological distress. A systematic review of the literature was undertaken using PubMed, PsycInfo, and CINAHL databases for English-language articles focusing on services available to address health care provider grief. Twelve articles were identified for review, 9 of which focused on pediatric health care providers. Interventions and measurement tools varied considerably between studies. Outcomes were variable and inconclusive. Health care provider grief can have serious implications for individual care providers as well as the health care system. Controlled experimental research is needed to determine how to effectively address this grief across a wide variety of specialties. A grief measurement tool targeted at health care providers as well as an accurate indication of the prevalence of health care provider grief would further the science in this area.

Dealing with the death of a long term patient; what is the impact and how do podiatrists cope?

“…The nature and scope of podiatrists’ practice provides the opportunity to develop close long lasting relationships with their patients. As such the resultant emotional investment within the patients’ healthcare journey can lead to a range of grief responses [29]. …”

“…If podiatrists are not openly discussing the emotional impact of patient death, this may make it challenging for some practitioners, especially new graduates to open up about their feelings of grief, even to colleagues. Grief can also be linked to professional burnout, especially if practitioners do not have the necessary skills to recognise and manage their grief [29, 32, 33]. Professional burnout is not new to podiatry and can be triggered by a number of factors [8].…”

“…This lack of knowledge limited their ability to initiate management strategies for coping with the emotional stress relating to patient death. The ability to recognise potential triggers to emotions such as grief is seen as important in targeting interventions to build resilience [29]. Profession specific and timely education about death and dying should be considered, but the need for such is often reactive [29, 34].…”

“…The ability to recognise potential triggers to emotions such as grief is seen as important in targeting interventions to build resilience [29]. Profession specific and timely education about death and dying should be considered, but the need for such is often reactive [29, 34]. However, it is recognised that across healthcare professions more education is required to better support practitioners in this area [31, 35].…”

Producing ‘Top Tips’ for Care Home Staff During the COVID-19 Pandemic in England: Rapid Reviews Inform Evidence-Based Practice but Reveal Major Gaps

“…Indeed, staff grief may be overlooked (Tsui et al, 2019) leading to what is known as disenfranchised grief. What evidence exists suggests there is a need to prepare staff via better education about bereavement (Österlind et al, 2011) and a need to have bereavement support mechanisms in place (Carton & Hupcey, 2014;Boerner et al, 2015). Some evidence suggests that grief over residents' deaths play an overlooked role in direct care worker burnout (Boerner et al, 2017).…”