Parental Perspectives on Hospital Staff Members' Acts of Kindness and Commemoration After a Child's Death

Mary Ellen Macdonald · Stephen Liben · Franco A. Carnevale · Janet E. Rennick · Susan L. Wolf · Donald Meloche +1 more

127 citations0/0 files storedPEDIATRICS

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health Palliative Care and End-of-Life Issues Palliative and Oncologic Care

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: Acts of kindness and commemoration by staff members often follow the death of a patient. Acts include attending funerals, sending sympathy cards, sending cards on birthdays/anniversaries, telephoning/visiting family homes, and attending memorial services. This study explores the significance of these acts for bereaved parents. METHODS: Twelve parents whose children died in the ICU of a tertiary care pediatric hospital were interviewed, to explore their experiences of the death. Investigators reviewed transcripts and observational field notes. Multidisciplinary team triangulation was used to corroborate themes, with cross-case analysis. RESULTS: Three themes emerged regarding parental experiences of staff members' acts, ie, (1) parents placed great importance on the hospital's memorial service and on staff members' presence at the service; (2) parents found it difficult to return to the hospital after the child's death but all attended the memorial service, finding some closure in the return; and (3) parents appreciated receiving cards and greatly valued staff members' efforts to telephone/visit and to attend the funeral. Months later, parents remembered positively which staff members engaged in which activities. Conversely, parents expressed disappointment when staff members did not engage in these activities and/or were absent from memorial/funeral services. CONCLUSIONS: Efforts to support families and to commemorate deceased children are appreciated by bereaved parents. Staff members' absences at commemorative events and a lack of supportive acts are noticed and regretted by families. Staff members and program administrators should attempt to arrange workloads to ensure meaningful contact between staff members and parents during the bereavement period.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 127 citations exist upstream.

References

1995Qualitative Research Methods for Health Professionals 1995Qualitative Research: Reaching the parts other methods cannot reach: an introduction to qualitative methods in health and health services research 2003Within-Case and Across-Case Approaches to Qualitative Data Analysis 1994Interpretive Phenomenology: Embodiment, Caring, and Ethics in Health and Illness 1997How to read a paper: Papers that go beyond numbers (qualitative research)1998Qualitative research and evidence based medicine 2000Ethnography and health care 1998RITUALS AND THE GRIEVING PROCESS

Cited by

2018Caring for Parents After the Death of a Child 2016Helping parents live with the hole in their heart: The role of health care providers and institutions in the bereaved parents' grief journeys 2008Bereaved parents' perspectives on their needs 2014What do bereaved parents want from professionals after the sudden death of their child: a systematic review of the literature 2016Understanding How Bereaved Parents Cope With Their Grief to Inform the Services Provided to Them

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.