Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Grandparents - the forgotten grievers
This short article describes in-depth interviews that were conducted with four bereaved grandparents following the death of a grandchild. Themes that emerged included a)the nature of being a grandparent b)the support needed specifically for grandparents c)exploring sad and happy memories of the grandchild d)survivor guilt and e)the importance of providing support for all relatives in the family.
The author, who is a nurse at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, provides a useful reference list on the subject. She says that ethical approval was difficult as this research is very sensitive. The gatekeepers for the grandparents being approached were the parents of the child who died.
Recommendations for practice would include providing time for grandparents to ask questions and to talk about their loss as well as helping them to normalise feelings such as helplessness and guilt so they would feel less alone in their grief.
Hospice Information Bulletin 2004 v3 ano3 p8-9
The author, who is a nurse at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, provides a useful reference list on the subject. She says that ethical approval was difficult as this research is very sensitive. The gatekeepers for the grandparents being approached were the parents of the child who died.
Recommendations for practice would include providing time for grandparents to ask questions and to talk about their loss as well as helping them to normalise feelings such as helplessness and guilt so they would feel less alone in their grief.
Hospice Information Bulletin 2004 v3 ano3 p8-9
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Evidence based bereavement
There was no posting for a few weeks - I was disheartened when I could not access the site on two occaions but it was easy today - so I start again
Type into GOOGLE
BMC Palliative Care and bereavement - and you will find a link to the following article
Forte Amanda L, Hill, Malinda, Pazder Rachel, Feudtner Chris
Bereavement care interventions: a systematic review
The authors identified 74 relevant studies evaluating diverse treatments designed to ameliorate a variety of outcomes associated with bereavement. Other than efficacy for pharmacological treatment for bereavement-related depression, they could identify no consistent pattern of treatment benefit among the other forms of interventions.
Conclusions: Due to the small number of clinically controlled trials, no rigorous evidence-based recommendations regarding the treatment of bereaved persons is currently possible except for the pharmacologic treatment of depression. They postulate the following as impeding scientific progress regarding bereavement care interventions:
excessive theoretical heterogeneity,
stultifying between-study variation,
inadequate reporting of intervention procedures
few published replication studies
methodological flaws of study design.
Add that to the fact it is a difficult subject on which to do randomised control trials anyway and one can see there is still a long way to go to discover the most appropriate treatments - however, practicitoners do know that bereaved people, both adults and children, can be helped by interventions - the best ways have simply not been pinpointed.
This article come from the open access publisher BioMed. Look out for other full text artilces on palliative care on the site
Denise
Type into GOOGLE
BMC Palliative Care and bereavement - and you will find a link to the following article
Forte Amanda L, Hill, Malinda, Pazder Rachel, Feudtner Chris
Bereavement care interventions: a systematic review
The authors identified 74 relevant studies evaluating diverse treatments designed to ameliorate a variety of outcomes associated with bereavement. Other than efficacy for pharmacological treatment for bereavement-related depression, they could identify no consistent pattern of treatment benefit among the other forms of interventions.
Conclusions: Due to the small number of clinically controlled trials, no rigorous evidence-based recommendations regarding the treatment of bereaved persons is currently possible except for the pharmacologic treatment of depression. They postulate the following as impeding scientific progress regarding bereavement care interventions:
excessive theoretical heterogeneity,
stultifying between-study variation,
inadequate reporting of intervention procedures
few published replication studies
methodological flaws of study design.
Add that to the fact it is a difficult subject on which to do randomised control trials anyway and one can see there is still a long way to go to discover the most appropriate treatments - however, practicitoners do know that bereaved people, both adults and children, can be helped by interventions - the best ways have simply not been pinpointed.
This article come from the open access publisher BioMed. Look out for other full text artilces on palliative care on the site
Denise
