Revisiting a Time of Study: Older Adults Learning Through Grieving.

A brief reflection of encountering four older adult women who claimed self-transformation through learning in late life grief.

Hospice Admission Assessment.

Hospice admission assessment is a pivotal encounter for patient/family and hospice representative. For patient/family, the admission is the threshold by which a particular level of care can commence and, symbolically, a certain marker in health status trajectory is reached. For hospice representative, the admission episode is an occasion to inaugurate an ambience that can serve to frame future hospice care experiences for the patient/family.

Anticipatory Grief: A Mere Concept?

Anticipatory grief (AG) has been studied, debated, and written about for several decades. This type of grief is also recognized in hospice and palliative care (HPC). The question, however, is whether the reality of AG is sufficiently upheld by professionals at the point of concrete service delivery.

Grief and palliative care: mutuality.

Grief and palliative care are interrelated and perhaps mutually inclusive. Conceptually and practically, grief intimately relates to palliative care, as both domains regard the phenomena of loss, suffering, and a desire for abatement of pain burden. Moreover, the notions of palliative care and grief may be construed as being mutually inclusive in terms of one cueing the other.

Waking.

An indubitable aspect of laboring in the realm of hospice care is the "everydayness" of human loss or the stark encounter of death in the human experience. This can pose as opportunity to adopt each day in a particular manner. As such, the focus of my reflection is on transposing certain dynamics of a (funeral) wake to broader professional and personal socioexistential processes.

Untaming grief ? For palliative care physicians.

Little doubt (if any) remains as to the assured importance of physicians possessing praxis regarding psychosocial issues, including grief dynamics, in order to tend to dying and sorrowing people. It stands to reason then that palliative care physicians become knowledgeable enough about the phenomenon of grief. But imperative nuances must also be considered: what sort of knowledge on grief, as well as how much of such knowledge, is enough? This article poses topical queries on the importance of the palliative care physician exercising a deliberate agenda to persistently refine one's personal framework or beliefs regarding grief.

Making explicit the contention in hospice care.

At the core of hospice remains the defining nature of mortals tending to other mortals facing diagnosed terminality. Such situations are pregnant with meanings. As mortals are subjective beings, social engagements become inundated with meaning differences.

Death-talks: transformative learning for physicians.

Conversations between physicians and their patients concerning terminal conditions are undoubtedly an uneasy process. These conversations are referred in this article as death-talks. Death-talks are social engagements among meaning-making human beings, and such encounters comprise complex grief dynamics as well as opportunities for personal insight.