workforce
The right to grieve
How to cope with workplace grief and loss.
Marie-Anne Schull interviewed by Dallas Bastian
It’ s normal to feel grief when a patient or client dies.
Marie-Anne Schull, from palliative care provider Karuna, offered this reassurance in an interview with Aged Care Insite. Her comments followed Karuna’ s survey of 100 nursing, health and aged care staff that revealed nearly 70 per cent felt that the grief and loss they experienced was an issue for them at work.
“ Healthcare and nursing home staff form significant relationships with their clients, patients and residents, so it is not surprising that they can experience grief and loss as a result of their work,” Schull said prior to the interview.
“ Their experience of loss is often overlooked and ignored and many report burnout and mental health problems as a result.”
Schull said workplace grief and loss impacted on the ability of employees to perform their roles, and added they were more likely to be absent, struggle to concentrate, lack energy and experience fatigue, indecisiveness and a short temper.
“ What we found is that health staff overwhelmingly want further support to cope with the day-to-day reality of grief and loss that surrounds them at work,” she said.
Schull sat down with Aged Care Insite to discuss the complexities of losing a client or resident as well as some of the potential coping strategies.
ACI: Why did Karuna decide to focus on the way health and aged care workers deal with the loss of a patient, client or resident? MS: It’ s an important part of Karuna’ s work. Karuna is a palliative care service, and over 25 years we’ ve supported about 10,000 families. We have a clinical team that goes out and works with all of these families, so we recognise that it’ s an important component of our role as an organisation. We have grief and bereavement staff who support the clinical team as well as the families that use our services.
Based on the survey, how often is this an issue for staff? We had about 100 nursing, health and aged care staff respond to a survey, and we were looking to identify the topic of greatest interest to them that related to their work. Workplace grief and loss had the strongest interest.
When we asked in the survey how many people had been impacted by workplace grief and loss, 75 per cent of respondents replied. We saw this as very significant, and that led us to develop a program on managing workplace grief and loss.
32 agedcareinsite. com. au