Grief Reactions, Duration, and Tasks of Mourning
This Whole Health tool focuses on grief related to a death loss. A focus on other types of losses (such as disability, divorce, job loss, effects of natural disasters) is beyond the scope of Coping with Grief and related tools. However, you may find the information in this Whole Health tool helpful when working with a Veteran who has experienced a loss other than death.
UT Health San Antonio Resources On Delivering Bad News
This video series from UT Health San Antonio provides shortened examples of how healthcare professionals should/shouldn't handle encounters regarding the delivery of difficult news. Useful for healthcare providers looking for simple guides for best practice in such situations.
Minnesota Health Care Directive Planning Toolkit
Why do I need a health care directive? Simply put, putting your wishes about your health care in writing helps make sure they'll be known and followed by family, friends, health care providers and others. Sometimes decisions must be made when a person isn't able to decide or communicate preferences. A health care directive communicates your wishes when you’re not able to. The Minnesota Health Care Directive Planning Toolkit helps you create a health care directive. The toolkit contains step-by-step instructions (and suggested forms) for completing a health care directive.
Death, Grief and Funerals in the COVID Age
Grief and death are on everyone’s mind. For most of us the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated death and collective grief is unprecedented. Combined with social distancing protocol, end-of life issues, death care, and grief have become even more complex.
SPIKES—A Six-Step Protocol for Delivering Bad News: Application to the Patient with Cancer
We describe a protocol for disclosing unfavorable information—“breaking bad news”—to cancer patients about their illness. Straightforward and practical, the protocol meets the requirements defined by published research on this topic. The protocol (SPIKES) consists of six steps.
Medical Aid-In-Dying
Medical Aid-In-Dying discusses the ethical and legal issues surrounding the practice of physician-assisted death (MAiD), where a doctor provides a patient with lethal medication at their request to end their life. It highlights that while most states prohibit MAiD, a few have legalized it, and debates continue within the medical and legal communities. The article emphasizes that state-of-the-art palliative care should be the primary approach to end-of-life suffering, with MAiD considered only as a last resort.
The Compassionate Friends Resources
Compassionate Friends supports families after the death of a child. It provides crisis hotline information, grief support group options and an online magazine We Need Not Walk Alone. The magazine features articles by and for parents, siblings, and grandparents who are grieving the death of a child in their family. Compassionate Friends also provides funeral service professionals with ways to provide compassionate care to offer bereaved parents, grandparents, siblings, and their families.
Tragedy Assistance Program For Survivors Inc.
TAPS provides a variety of programs to survivors nationally and worldwide. TAPS also conducts regional survivor seminars for adults and youth programs at locations across the country, as well as retreats and expeditions around the world.
About The Organization: TAPS is the national nonprofit organization providing compassionate care and comprehensive resources for all those grieving the death of a military or veteran loved one.
Kubler-Ross Stages of Dying and Subsequent Models of Grief
Medical professionals will work with dying patients in all disciplines, and the process is difficult as care shifts from eliminating or mitigating illness to preparing for death. This is a difficult transition for patients, their loved ones, and healthcare providers to undergo. This activity provides paradigms for the process of moving toward death as well as a discussion of how they should and should not be applied, supporting the interprofessional team to address the unique needs of their patients and guide them and their loved ones through the process.
The Importance of Cultural Competence in Pain and Palliative Care
This activity reviews the evaluation of pain and palliative care in a culturally sensitive manner. It highlights the role of the interprofessional team in the management of pain and palliation in this setting.