Nursing Grief Summary

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When we think of grief and loss, we often think of the dying individual and the family. But what about the healthcare team, what about the nurses? Nurses are often viewed as strong, knowledgeable individuals, heroes to some, and angels to others. Although nurses are highly admired by many, they are too susceptible to the many psychosocial affects that their patients are experiencing when going through any type of grief and loss. The article I chose explores the physical and emotional stress nurses experience when losing a patient and are constantly exposed to suffering patients. It also includes interventions nurses can use to better cope with grief and loss. The author of this article is a nurse who worked on an oncology unit. She wrote from her perspective and experience during those times. However, I find it to be beneficial to all nurses. Close, personal relationships often develop between nurses and patients with cancer throughout the course of treatment. When patients die, nurses may experience an overwhelming sense of grief and loss (Houck, 2014). I believe that pride and being held in such high standards prohibits nurses from recognizing these feelings, thus they become more perplexed and cumulative. (Houck, 2014) describes how cumulative loss may contribute to the development of …show more content…

Her theory was that during the grieving process, individuals go through five stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. (Houck, 2014) states that the first step in recognizing and combating the symptoms of cumulative grief and compassion fatigue is acknowledgment. How can one fix a problem if they cannot identify that a problem exists? Personal obstacles to acknowledging grief, such as personality type, previous experiences with death and grief, and general coping strategies are some barriers that could impede judgement to acknowledging that there is in fact an issue on hand (Houck,

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