Development and initial test of the self-report grief and bereavement assessment

Abstract

Implementing evidence-based and cost-effective bereavement care is a challenge. A selfreport measure could assist to identify caregivers at-risk of prolonged grief. We developed a new measure via five steps: identification of risk and protective factors for prolonged grief, item generation, consultation with an expert panel (n = 8), review by the academic team and expert panel, and a pilot test with family caregivers (n = 19) from three palliative care services. The Grief and Bereavement Assessment is a brief self-report measure that is theoretically and empirically grounded, acceptable to caregivers, feasible for use in palliative care, and requires psychometric validation.

Adoption of evidence‐based end‐of‐life and bereavement support to families in cancer care: A contextual analysis study with health professionals

“…Assessing families' risk for adverse mental health outcomes was the least frequently practiced evidence-based activity during both illness trajectories (Kobel et al, 2019;Naef, Peng-Keller, et al, 2020), which may be due to the lack of consensus on how to best screen for risk and prolonged grief (Hudson et al, 2018;Sealey et al, 2015) or perceptions about the scope of practice (Naef, Peng-Keller, et al, 2020). Recent efforts have focused on the development of self-reports (Sealey et al, 2023) and brief, practical tools for bereavement risk assessment (Blackburn & Dwyer, 2017;Grant et al, 2020;Morris, Anderson, et al, 2020). However, the need to develop and test valid, acceptable tools that apply to clinical practice remains (Hilberdink et al, 2023;Roberts et al, 2020).…”