An Evaluation of a Bereavement Program in a US Research Hospital

Abstract

The Bereavement Program at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center was established in 2005. The program makes contact with the next of kin on 4 occasions postnotification of death. The objective of this analysis was to evaluate program effectiveness for those individuals who we successfully made contact with on all 4 occasions (N = 39). At 12 months postnotification, the majority viewed the NIH as a source of support (56%), and the frequency of positive emotional ratings increased (59%). There are limitations to this analysis, and biases may be present. In sum, this analysis serves as an example of a successful hospital-based bereavement program that enrolls patients who have been treated at the institution in any capacity who are also patients enrolled in institutional review board-approved research protocols.

Bereavement support standards and bereavement care pathway for quality palliative care

“…Provision of bereavement support is an essential component of palliative care service delivery, which is explicitly acknowledged in several seminal national and international publications (National Institute for Clinical Excellence, 2004; World Health Organization, 2004; National Consensus Project for Quality Palliative Care, 2009; De Lima et al, 2012). While bereavement support is integral to palliative care, it is typically insufficiently resourced, under-researched, and not systematically applied (Hudson, 2013; Lynes et al, 2014; Guldin et al, 2015; Stroebe & Boerner, 2015; Waller et al, 2016). It may therefore be considered “the forgotten child” of the palliative care family.…”