Analyzing Nurses Grief

This author’s personal perceptions concerning patients facing a lingering terminal illness, have been shaped by over 20 years of critical care nursing experience. Facing death and illness on a daily basis requires self-examination and a high degree of comfort with one’s own mortality, limits and values. Constant exposure to the fragility of life forces respect for the whole person and the people who love them. A general approach to patients who are actively dying is to allow them to define what they want and need during this time. The nurse’s role

On reading this article and identifying the study, there was a clear insight on how death and dying, and even improved health, impacted those nurses (Conte, 2014). Nurses, who worked closely with their patients, through the perils and suffering, culminating of death and losses, had grief not readily explored to enable that comfort zone (Conte, 2014).

The purpose of this paper is to critique a qualitative research article in all phases of the report. For this purpose, the article that will be used is “Lamentation and loss: expression of caring by contemporary surgical nurses” written by Carol Enns and David Gregory. This paper will address the problem statement, literature review, conceptual underpinnings and research questions, research design/method, ethical considerations, sampling, data collection, data analysis, confirmability of the findings, interpretation and discussion of findings, additional considerations, and rating the scientific merit of a research report.

Death is inevitable. It is one of the only certainties in life. Regardless, people are often uncomfortable discussing death. Nyatanga (2016) posits that the idea of no longer existing increases anxiety and emotional distress in relation to one’s mortality. Because of the difficulty in level of care for end-of-life patients, the patient and the family often need professional assistance for physical and emotional care. Many family caregivers are not professionally trained in medicine, and this is where hospice comes into play. Hospice aims to meet the holistic needs of both the patient and the patient’s family through treatment plans, education, and advocacy. There is a duality of care to the treatment provided by hospice staff in that they do not attempt to separate the patient’s care from the family’s care. Leming and Dickinson (2011) support that hospice, unlike other clinical fields, focuses on the patient and the family together instead of seeing the patient independent of the family. Many times in hospitals, the medical team focuses solely on the goal of returning the patient back to health in order for them to return to their normal lives. They do not take into account the psychological and spiritual components of the patient’s journey and the journey that the family must take as well. For treatment of the patient, Leming and Dickinson agree that hospice does not attempt to cure patients, and instead concentrates solely

Nurses: Assist the patients and families to cope with the end-of-life process such as assessing and

Death is a part of life and eventually everyone on this earth will experience it. Nurses play an important role in death. Mourning the death of a loved one is something that almost everyone will experience in this lifetime because it is a natural response to death. Bereavement, grief and mourning are all effected by one’s culture, religion, the relationship with the deceased, personality, and how the person died.

Dying is a process that involves the entire family; that is to say, the family that is defined by the person. The nurse must be aware that this is not only an individual process but a family process. This involves recognizing family dynamics and communication patterns and facilitating healthy interactions.

Losing a loved one can be very painful, emotional and overwhelming. The difficult part after losing a loved one is learning how to cope with the loss. In order for nurses to help individuals cope with a loss of a loved one it is important for them to understand the grief process. This paper will define and explain the bereavement role, disenfranchised grief, four tasks of mourning and how nurses can help bereaved individuals with these processes.

Cumulative grief is known as a caregiver’s emotional response to many episodes of grief (Shorter & Stayt). The multiple encounters with death give a nurse no opportunity to grieve adequately or completely for each individual patient that has died (Shorter & Stay, 2010). The unresolved grief accumulates and can lead to emotional and physicals problems which can then effect a nurse professionally and personally (Shorter & Stayt, 2010). The effects of cumulative grief include denial, feelings of decreased personal competency, overwhelming grief, low self-esteem, and pre-occupation with death (Shorter & Stayt,

This paper explores the emotional differences that people in the health care profession experience when it comes to the death of a patient. It defines the bereavement role, the four tasks of mourning, disenfranchised grief, compassion fatigue and how ambiguity and a lack of social acceptance can lead to decreased quality of patient care. In conclusion, the author offers an opinion of how to better manage the grieving and mourning process of care providers from an industry-wide standpoint.

Disenfranchised grief can affect an individual experiencing loss that is not societally recognized. A term originally described by Kenneth Doka, disenfranchised grief is classically defined by four components, and one specific population subject to experiencing disenfranchised grief is nurses. This is due to the predominant cultural values found in the nursing profession as well as the parameters of the nurse-patient relationship. Knowing that nurses are potentially vulnerable to disenfranchised grief, it is important to discuss the mechanisms to minimize the factors contributing to its occurrence and the consequences of its effects. Awareness of how to help oneself can then be utilized to increase efficacy in the nurse’s position and in aiding patients who are duly experiencing disenfranchised grief.

The second of the four tasks of mourning is to experience the pain of grief rather than to avoid that pain and keep moving. In order to provide high quality care to patients, a healthcare worker must be empathetic. This requires the nurse to be open to the emotional needs of patients and their families. As nurses participate in these patient’s struggles to survive and their inability to win the battle, they will inevitably be emotionally involved. That is just a natural human reaction. Two of the doctors in the study of Greek healthcare workers talked about having to deal with the pain of loss. One physician said that he would go to his office for

Grief is a personal adaptive reaction to the loss of a relationship or a serious attachment and it’s a process that takes time. Nicholas Wolterstorff in his book, Lament for a Son, narrated this grief process as he reflected on his son’s death. Provoked by death, grief can impede a person’s thought process and can take a heavy toll as they become emotionally labile (Brosche, 2003). In a healthcare setting, a nurse may experience grief after the death of a patient and often this emotion is masked and kept private. It is crucial for healthcare providers to recognize and deal with emotions appropriately to competently function in the workplace. This paper will examine the five stages of grief as defined by Kübler-Ross and how these stages are in parallel to Nicholas Wolterstorff’s grief process and how he eventually finds joy in understanding the significance of death.

Nurses are the hospice team members who spend a lot of time with dying patients and their families. “The World Health Organization has characterized the need for expert, palliative and end-of-life care as a top priority for global health care. The specialty of hospice and palliative care nursing embraced a humanistic caring and holistic approach to patient care.” (Wu, Vilker, 2011).

The loss of a loved one is a very crucial time where an individual can experience depression, somatic symptoms, grief, and sadness. What will be discussed throughout this paper is what the bereavement role is and its duration, as well as the definition of disenfranchised grief and who experiences this type of grief. I will also touch upon the four tasks of mourning and how each bereaved individual must accomplish all four tasks before mourning can be finalized. Lastly, with each of these topics, nursing implications will be outlined on how to care for bereaved individuals and their families.