Melissa Bloomer, a lecturer in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Monash University, has been granted $20,000 to investigate how paediatric and neonatal Intensive Care Unit (ICU) nurses manage the grief associated with caring for a dying patient and also examine ways they can be supported at such times. Melissa’s previous research revealed that deaths often occur outside the contact hours for social workers and bereavement counsellors, leaving nurses as the primary family supporter immediate after someone dies. Nurses usually have no formal training equipping them for this role, Melissa Bloomer contends.
She is currently doing a PhD on how nurses recognise and respond to dying patients in the acute care setting. She has a broad interest in end-of-life issues, writing an article on family conversations about death and dying for a 2011 series on talking about death on The Conversation.
Research reveals that death anxiety iss higher in health professionals, Bloomer says. “However, there are nurses who have developed coping mechanisms”. These coping mechanisms might include exercise and relxation therapies, turning down extra shifts … and often humour, shared with other staff.
How prepared do you feel to care for a dying patient in a hospital setting? How confident do you feel in helping relatives with their grief while someone they love is dying – and afterwards? How have you coped with death at work?
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