Through a focus on one child's extended stay in a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, I raise four general questions about pediatric medicine: How should physicians communicate with parents of very sick children? How should physicians involve parents of…
OBJECTIVES: To determine the relative influence of different factors on place of death in patients with cancer. DATA SOURCES: Four electronic databases-Medline (1966-2004), PsycINFO (1972-2004), CINAHL (1982-2004), and ASSIA (1987-2004); previous…
This study explored the experiences and needs of nine parents who had received hospital-based bereavement support following the death of their child from cancer, in Western Australia. Six prominent themes emerged from thematic data analysis: personal…
OBJECTIVES: Acts of kindness and commemoration by staff members often follow the death of a patient. Acts include attending funerals, sending sympathy cards, sending cards on birthdays/anniversaries, telephoning/visiting family homes, and attending…
OBJECTIVE: For patients who die in hospitals, the regionalization of tertiary health care services may be increasing the home-to-hospital distance, particularly for younger patients whose care is especially regionalized and for whom access to and use…
Grounded theory methods were used to study the experiences of 8 bereaved fathers whose children received care in a home-based hospice program. In-depth, unstructured interviews were audiotaped, transcribed, and coded for themes and categories. Every…
BACKGROUND: Discussing end-of-life issues with terminally ill patients is often considered distressing and harmful. This study was conducted to assess whether interviewing terminally ill patients and their caregivers about death, dying, and…
CONTEXT: Clinicians have observed various patterns of functional decline at the end of life, but few empirical data have tested these patterns in large populations. OBJECTIVE: To determine if functional decline differs among 4 types of illness…
BACKGROUND: Little is known about the effect of parental bereavement on physical health. We investigated whether the death of a child increased mortality in parents. METHODS: We undertook a follow-up study based on national registers. From 1980 to…
BACKGROUND: Some consider the loss of a child as the most stressful life event. When the death is caused by a malignancy, the parents are commonly exposed not only to their own loss, but also to the protracted physical and emotional suffering of the…
In this study, we examined the violent death bereavement trajectories of 173 parents by following them prospectively for 5 years after their children's deaths by accident, suicide, homicide, or undetermined causes. Using latent growth curve…
BACKGROUND: One of the questions faced by the parents of a child who is terminally ill with a malignant disease is whether or not they should talk about death with their child. METHODS: In 2001, we attempted to contact all parents in Sweden who had…
This article explores the concepts of narrative as story, of storytelling, and of the narrative approach to qualitative research. Within this, I will also examine the social nature of narrative and the implications of this for research. I will look…
This article compares the outcome and predictors of psychosocial distress of parents bereaved by young suicides, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), and child accidents. One objective is to explore whether suicide bereavement is more difficult for…
This paper addresses issues relating to place of death in young adults with terminal cancer, through the perspectives of their parents. Evidence suggests that the majority of terminally ill cancer patients would prefer the option of a home death, but…
OBJECTIVES: To determine which staff behaviours and interventions were helpful to a family who had a child die in the intensive care unit (ICU) and which behaviours could be improved. METHODS: Families whose child died six to 18 months earlier were…
A program of education and support is essential for children and their parent or adult caregivers when the children have experienced the death of a significant person. Children need guidance on how to deal with their profound feelings of grief. The…
Preparation for their changing roles in family & society, as well as readying their intimate space for the arrival of an infant, totally engage expectant parents. Miscarriage or stillbirth may bring on a grief storm that strips away many tender roots…
Parents who experience the sudden death of a child will interact with many professionals in the period immediately following the death notification through to the funeral. The way these professionals respond to the parents during this critical period…
AbstractBackground: In an effort to improve the quality of life of children with cancer, this study analyzes the signs and symptoms at the end of life in such children. It is hoped that these data will contribute to the development of appropriate…
A reliable and valid measure of the quality of the dying experience would help clinicians and researchers improve care for dying patients. To describe the validity of an instrument assessing the quality of dying and death using the perspective of…
Twenty-four families who had participated in a Home Care Program for children terminally ill with cancer and 13 families of similar children who had died in the hospital completed inventories on parent and sibling personality as well as family…
The parents of a child who dies feel the emotions of shock, mourning, and confusion as they slowly come to accept the finality of the child's death. In contemporary America they frequently feel isolated and abandoned. The individuals and institutions…
A review of the literature provides the basis for a discussion of the impact of sibling death on healthy children whose emotional needs may be unattended both by parents and professionals. Factors which may deter hospice practitioners from delivering…
An increasing body of research suggests that the death of a child results in a unique form of bereavement for surviving parents. A study reviewed research findings on parental bereavement, including those from the author's ongoing longitudinal study.…
This study reports the effects of sibling death on 33 adolescents from white, middle- to upper-middle income families. Contact was made through mutual support groups for bereaved parents. A focused interview was used to gather data on bereavement…
When an infant dies at the height of the mother-child attachment period, the experience is traumatic and shattering for the mother. Examining successful resolution of this loss requires a distinction between adjustment to the external reality of loss…
The Grief Experience Inventory (GEI) and the MMPI were used to assess bereavement reactions in 102 newly bereaved individuals; 107 controls were also assessed. Intensities of bereavement reactions were compared across three types of deaths…
This study is concerned with dynamic processes that underly the rapid, degenerative changes associated with the "dying" stage of the multicellular organism's life cycle. The interaction between negative and positive feedback cycles is discussed:…
The fear of "choking to death" is on the mind of most patients suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). So far, however, there have been no systematic surveys concerning the dying phase in a general ALS population. We therefore performed a…
Providing care to a spouse or partner who is dying and then losing that person are among the most stressful of human experiences. A longitudinal study of the caregiving partners of men with AIDS showed that in addition to intense negative…
Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) alone are unlikely to provide reliable estimates of the incidence of rare events because of their limited size. Cohort, case control, and other observational studies have large numbers but are vulnerable to various…
