practical living
“That sharing is so important. But now
we’ve got people, including large attendant
families, where they all feel – even the
second and third cousins – that they are
absolutely critical family members and they
must there. And Mother has got 20 or 40
grandchildren. They all feel they’ve got to
be there, and now they can’t.”
Bachelor points to Freud’s work on grief,
which says that grief is a task that we have
to perform and work through, and if we
don’t, there will be consequences for our
mental health.
“And if we can’t work through things in a
smooth process and our grief is frustrated,
we can end up with some serious
psychological hang-ups,” Bachelor says.
“So, I am concerned in all of this, that a
lot of people are not going to be able to
say their goodbyes and honour their loved
one in a way that they believe they should.
And so I am concerned about the impact
this is going to have on lots of people.
“People are familiar with Kübler-Ross,
but her work has been seriously misapplied
because she wasn’t dealing with mourners.
She was actually dealing with people
who are facing their own mortality within
one particular hospice, but that’s been
latched on to.
“And so many people talk about these
specific stages of grief, and of course we all
grieve differently. All that is really common
in our grief is that there is a beginning, a
middle and an end.”
There is also potential for our grief to
be compounded as panic and anxiety are
heightened during the pandemic, especially
for health workers who face death regularly.
Aged care must look after its workforce
This may raise some questions for the
aged care sector, as some experts believe
that grief among staff is not properly
understood.
Anita Westera is a former RN who has
worked in the aged and community sector
as well as on policy work with state and
federal governments, including advising
the former NSW minister for ageing.
She is now a research fellow at the
University of Wollongong’s Centre for
Health Service Development, and she
believes the grief caused by this pandemic
has the aged care workforce under
“extreme stress”.
She tells Aged Care Insite that in previous
research she interviewed the major peak
bodies and aged care providers who
acknowledged that bereavement
among staff is “under-recognised” and
described it as “the silent experience
of staff”.
“There might be some one-off
counselling and support, but there’s no
real structured approach to looking after
and supporting aged care staff in normal
circumstances,” says Westera.
“At this time, we have staff experiencing
heightened stress just because of the
pandemic and also the fact that they
are having to provide, on a day to day
basis, so much more intensive personal,
interpersonal, emotional support for
residents because families and visitors
aren’t coming through or volunteers who
would normally provide that support aren’t
there,” she says.
“They’re already under extreme stress,
so their ability to cope in terms of death in
times of COVID… the impact is likely to be
far greater.”
Westera said that in normal circumstances
there is often a “predictive element” to death
in residential aged care. About a third of
residential aged care residents die each year,
and staff are able to plan and often bring
families into the process.
However, if homes experience a spate of
deaths due to COVID-19 – such as in the
aged care homes in Sydney – the speed at
which they occur and the unknowns which
surround the virus can be frightening for
staff and families alike.
“I think it highlights that there is a need
for systems or the sector to actually take
it more seriously than it currently does,”
Westera says.
“And I probably would liken it to an
intensive care unit in a major hospital,
albeit it’s an acute situation, but … there
might be lessons to be learned from
the health system that could be applied
in the aged care system. But in the short
term, it’s about firstly acknowledging
that staff are experiencing this.”
Westera has worked closely with the
aged care royal commission over the last
year and has found that overall staffing
numbers and training are inadequate, and
therefore staff are already working in tough
conditions, now made worse by this crisis.
“Staff are extremely stressed as it is.
In our report, which we did for the royal
commission, we found over 50 per cent
of people living in aged care facilities
have staffing levels that are what we call
unacceptable.
“From a government perspective, it is
about increasing the staff but increasing
the capacity of staff or increasing
skilled staff.
“A lot of our aged care personal care
workers in particular are working across
multiple sites. They’re not well paid, they’re
not well skilled and they’re certainly not
well supported. My sense is that if we
had better clinical skills in the staff in
terms of registered nurses and so forth,
you might eventually also see improved
support for those personal care workers
as well.”
Adjusting to strange times
Funeral homes, churches and officiants
have adjusted the best they can to the
changes. Online funerals have become
commonplace.
“Some fantastic things have developed,
firstly funerals are now pretty much all
being videoed and a lot of them are being
live-streamed: you can even have live
captioning now on the services and that
can be done in different languages,” says
Bachelor.
“So you can have some of the family
sitting at home watching this in English
and some of them watching it in Italian or
whatever the language may be.”
But he does believe the government
messaging around funeral practice could
be clearer.
“Just a couple of days ago, we had a
local police station phone us to say that a
lady has come in and asked can she come
and visit the cemetery. They [the police]
were asking us if she could come and visit
the cemetery.
“That demonstrates to me that nobody
quite knows what’s going on and what is
acceptable, not even the police. I think
it really is a very awkward situation, I
suppose, for all of us in everything, but
in funerals, which are a most sensitive
thing. I understand we’ve got to try and
keep people apart, but I think in some
situations we should just be asking
people to do their best, but allow people
to grieve.”
And for dealing with the new grief
paradigm, Bachelor suggests that what we
need to do now is to simply talk with one
another.
“The best thing I can suggest for people
to do is talk and share,” he says.
“And so, my suggestion is, you’ve got
emotions for a very, very good reason,
whether you’re male or female, don’t be
afraid to use them.
“And where you need release, take that
release, no one will ever think you are less
a person for it.
“But I would say, be yourself.” ■
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