A Randomized Controlled Feasibility Study to Evaluate the Online Delivery of Storytelling Through Music With Oncology Nurses.

Background: Oncology nurses frequently contend with intense work-related emotions stemming from their roles, which include bearing witness to suffering, managing end-of-life care, and navigating ethical dilemmas. These emotional challenges can lead to burnout, compassion fatigue, and overall psychological distress.

Objective: To determine the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effect of implementing Storytelling Through Music (STM) online with oncology nurses.

The Development of a Bereavement Support Group Curriculum for Bereaved Parents of Young Adult Children: Bridging the Gap.

There is limited research addressing the bereavement needs of parents whose young adult (YA) children have died from cancer. Research within oncology about the impact of child loss has tended to focus on parents of pediatric aged children. We adapted a general bereavement support group curriculum used with adults to address the unique needs of bereaved parents of YAs.

Survey Study of a Hospital-Based Bereavement Program During COVID-19: Insights to Improve Support of the Bereaved.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted that bereavement care is under-recognized with few hospitals offering universal bereavement services. One hundred sixty-nine bereaved individuals, whose loved ones died at our hospital during 2021 and 2022, completed a survey about their experience with the bereavement program. Of respondents who recalled receiving bereavement outreach, 79% rated speaking to a team member soon after the death as having a positive impact on their bereavement, and 75% rated receiving a condolence call or note from the team positively.

Early Bereavement Psychosocial Outcomes in Parents of Children Who Died of Cancer With a Focus on Social Functioning.

Purpose: The early grief experience of parents of children who died of cancer remains understudied. Understanding psychosocial symptomology and functioning of parents early in their bereavement is essential to developing supportive interventions aimed at offsetting poor mental and physical outcomes.

Methods: Parents of children from two centers who died of cancer 6 to 24 months before were mailed a survey that included validated tools and additional Likert scale-based questions.

Caring for People We Know: An Unrecognized Risk for Burnout?

As the field of palliative care continues to grow, many clinicians will care for patients with whom they have personal connections. Breaching the boundary between a clinician's personal and professional life is potentially an unrecognized risk for burnout. We explored the challenges of caring for patients personally known to clinicians and the types of support needed, with a view to developing preliminary practice guidelines.

": Qualitative interviews with bereaved caregivers reveal complexity in measuring goal-concordant care at the end of life.

Background: Experts consider goal-concordant care an important healthcare outcome for individuals with serious illness. Despite their relationship to the patient and knowledge about the patient's wishes and values, little is known about bereaved family caregivers' perceptions of how end-of-life care aligns with patient goals and preferences.

Aim: To understand caregivers' perceptions about patients' care experiences, the extent to which care was perceived as goal-concordant, and the factors that contextualized the end-of-life care experience.

One Size Doesn't Fit All in Early Pediatric Oncology Bereavement Support.

Content: Parents who experience the death of a child have significantly higher rates of psychological distress compared to non-bereaved parents. The effectiveness of current bereavement supports, and ideal types and timing of future supportive interventions aimed at improving negative sequalae are relatively unknown.

Objectives: This interview-based study explored the early bereavement needs of 15 parents of children who died from cancer, including the bereavement support received, perceived barriers to support, and desired additional supportive interventions.

The parental role before and after SIDS.

Role confusion is a prominent constituent symptom of Prolonged Grief Disorder in parents after their infants die from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). We interviewed 31 parents of SIDS infants 2-5 years post-loss examining the parental role before death, at the time of loss, and in bereavement. Thematic analysis found disruption of the role and re-imagined responsibilities for their child's physical security, emotional security, and meaning.

The Development of a Bereavement Support Group Curriculum for Young Adults Dealing with the Death of a Partner: A Quality Improvement Project.

Little is known about the bereavement needs of young adults (YAs) whose partners have died from cancer. Historically, research about the impact of widowhood has focused on adults in later life. We adapted a bereavement support group curriculum used with older adults to address the unique needs of younger bereaved partners.

Engaging Parents of Children Who Died From Cancer in Research on the Early Grief Experience.

Context: Bereaved parents provide an important perspective for improving care for patients and families throughout the illness and after a child's death. However, involvement of bereaved parents in research studies is fraught with concerns over inflicting psychological distress and issues with study recruitment. Data on research strategies to engage parents early in their bereavement are limited.

Burnout in psychosocial oncology clinicians: A systematic review.

Objective: Few studies have examined burnout in psychosocial oncology clinicians. The aim of this systematic review was to summarize what is known about the prevalence and severity of burnout in psychosocial clinicians who work in oncology settings and the factors that are believed to contribute or protect against it.

Method: Articles on burnout (including compassion fatigue and secondary trauma) in psychosocial oncology clinicians were identified by searching PubMed/MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, and the Web of Science Core Collection.

Bereavement care for family caregivers of neuro-oncology patients.

Bereavement care is best conceptualized as a preventive model of care. It is an integral component of palliative care where support for the family begins at the time of diagnosis and continues beyond the death of the patient. Even though grief is a normal response to loss, the death of a loved one is believed to be the most powerful stressor in everyday life with the potential to cause great distress in all those closely associated with the deceased.

Benefits of powered standing wheelchair devices for adolescents with Duchenne muscular dystrophy in the first year of use.

Aim: Poorer physical and mental health often accompany loss of walking in Duchenne muscular dystrophy. This study assessed the impacts of powered wheelchair standing device (PWSD) use on muscle and joint pain, joint angles when standing and mental health in adolescents with Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Methods: Fourteen adolescents and parents participated in a stepped wedge design study over 12 months.

Caring for Bereaved Family Members During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Before and After the Death of a Patient.

Bereavement care is considered an integral component of quality end-of-life care endorsed by the palliative care movement. However, few hospitals and health care institutions offer universal bereavement care to all families of patients who die. The current coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has highlighted this gap and created a sense of urgency, from a public health perspective, for institutions to provide support to bereaved family members.

Insights from Bereaved Family Members about End-of-Life Care and Bereavement.

Bereavement programs provide institutions with an avenue for obtaining feedback from family members about their experiences during a patient's illness and end-of-life (EOL) period that can be used to improve both patient care and the care of bereaved individuals. We examined family members' experiences about the clinical care their loved one received at EOL and the perceived effect this care had on their subsequent bereavement. Survey.

Transitional objects of grief.

Background: Transitional objects provide security and symbolic connection with valued others when separated from them. Bereaved parents often keep, cherish and visit saved objects of their deceased child. This research examined the hypothesis that these objects behave as transitional objects of grief in bereaved mothers during three years following their infants' deaths from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

A standardized approach to bereavement risk-screening: a quality improvement project.

Identifying family members at-risk of poor bereavement outcomes poses a challenge for clinicians, resulting in inconsistent bereavement follow-up. The current quality improvement study tests a method for identification of at-risk family members, and describes follow-up they received from the bereavement service at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. A standardized bereavement risk assessment, referral and follow-up process was piloted as part of a quality improvement project using a plan-do-study-act approach (PDSA).

Reconsidering early parental grief following the death of a child from cancer: a new framework for future research and bereavement support.

Purpose: Parents of children that die from cancer are at increased risk of significant long-term psychosocial and physical morbidities. Less, however, is known about the experience of parents early in the grief process. Currently used frameworks and instruments used to understand and assess outcomes in parents early in the grief experience are inadequate and may serve to pathologize the normal grief response.

Initial validation of a needs instrument for young people bereaved by familial cancer.

Objective: This study aimed to validate the Bereaved Cancer Needs Instrument (BCNI), an instrument designed to assess the unmet psychosocial needs of adolescents and young adults (AYAs, 12-25 years) who have experienced the death of a parent or sibling to cancer.

Methods: In total, 335 participants aged 12 to 25 (M = 15.80, SD = 3.

"Remembrance": A Self-Care Tool for Clinicians.

Despite increasing attention in the medical and nursing literature about the importance of self-care for clinicians and the prevention of burnout, coping with the deaths of patients is an often-neglected component of clinical training. In this article, we describe the development of "Remembrance," an interdisciplinary approach to acknowledge and process the deaths of patients on our inpatient palliative care service, paying particular attention to how patients and their families affect us as clinicians. We believe that such a practice is an important component of both quality end-of-life care and clinician self-care, which should be routinely taught and incorporated into clinical services.

The Grief of Parents After the Death of a Young Child.

Research demonstrates that severe forms of grief and grief-related pathology exist in the general population. Less attention, however, has been paid to the grief of parents following the death of a young, dependent child. In this review, we summarize a search of Pubmed, PsycINFO and Web of Science from 1995 to 2017, using the terms 'parental complicated grief', 'parental traumatic grief', and 'parent Prolonged Grief Disorder', specifically addressing parental grief and identified risk factors for complicated or prolonged grief.