The death of a loved one can be difficult for family members who carried out the day-to-day home care of the person. The grieving period can be eased by existing support from nurses and other medical professionals, according to Penn State nursing researchers.
“What we know is that the caregiver’s primary contact with the health care system is during brief office visits (for the patient),” Janice L. Penrod, professor of nursing and director of the Center for Nursing Research, said. “Our goal is to develop an assessment that is fast and efficient to give us a snapshot of that caregiver so that we can at least identify needs, and if not intervene during that brief office visit, give them information and a referral to help them smooth the course.”
For the study, Penrod and colleagues compared 2 theories: Penrod’s novel theory for caregiving through the end of life and a specific bereavement theory by G. A. Bonnano, a clinical psychologist and pioneer in the field of bereavement. According to Bonnano’s theory, grief fluctuates, and eventually, the grieving caregiver will “return to a state of equilibrium.”
Penrod’s theory involves 4 stages: sensing disruption, challenging normal, building a new normal, and reinventing normal. The researchers focused the study comparison on the last stage, “reinventing normal.” This is traditionally known as the bereavement period.
Penrod and her colleagues interviewed 14 caregivers after the death of the family member they were caring for. Questions pertained to how each individual was coping with the loss. By comparing the 2 theories, Penrod and colleagues found significant conceptual similarities and found that caregivers fit well into both theories. Answers to the interview questions more closely matched the study theories rather than the traditional 5 stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Furthermore, researchers found that coping with the death of a loved one isn’t something moved through step by step; instead the process is similar to riding a roller coaster, where some moments are better than others.
Last week, the researchers reported their study results to attendees at the Council for the Advancement of Nursing 2012 State of the Science Congress in Washington, DC.
“This is the groundwork for understanding how caregiving proceeds over a trajectory of time so that we can better intervene to support caregivers across that trajectory,” said Penrod.
Source: Penn State.
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