What is grief and what can it teach us?

xxi, 182 leaves ; 29 cm.While a growing body of grief research focuses on how death affects the lives and the menatl well-being of survivors, death continues to be a mystery and the ultimate human crisis. Grief is now emerging as a concept of increasing significance for health care professionals and it is influencing the care doctors and nurses provide for dying patients and their families. A narrative inquiry format supports this phenomenological study of death and dying from the dual perspectives of the author's professional death experience as a nurse and her personal grief experiences as a daughter. Following the death experience the researcher's elderly father, the author examined grief and considered the grieving process form a phonomenological perspective which extends the scope of the stages of grief (Kubler-Ross, 1969) that are the most familiar to health care professionals. The narrative inquiry emphasizes the interrelatedness of various aspects associated with grief, including knowledge, advocacy, autonomy, support, and spirituality. The study articulates the connections between these aspects on professional and personal levels. The author also discusses trends that are influencing the increasing need for greater understanding of the care of the dying and the ability of the family and health care professionals to respond. Although the family retains an important role in end-of-life-care, in the decades ahead some of their responsiblities may shift to a more formal involvement that will influence the grieving process of the survivors. Whithin the phemonological framework of the researcher's death and dying experience, the author presents information, options, and coping strategies for those involved in such experiences