Guidelines for a Palliative Approach in Residential Aged Care

CHAPTER 15
BEREAVEMENT SUPPORT
When a resident dies, loss and grief may be experienced by the aged care team, the family, and other
residents. To assist in understanding bereavement, the following definition of terms is provided:
• Loss is the severing or breaking of an attachment to someone or something, resulting in a
changed relationship.
• Grief is the normal response to loss. It includes a range of responses: physical, mental,
emotional and spiritual. These are usually associated with unhappiness, anger, guilt, pain and
longing for the lost person or thing.
• Bereavement is the total reaction to a loss and includes the process of healing or ‘recovery’
from the loss. Although there are similarities in people’s responses, there are also marked
differences. Each person will grieve and recover in their own way.
15.1 CHARACTERISTICS OF GRIEF, LOSS AND
BEREAVEMENT
The models that are frequently used for grief assume that it is an illness; hence, grief reactions
become outcome focused (e.g. ‘the person will recover’). Such assumptions focus interventions
on an individual’s ‘deficits’, suggesting there is something ‘wrong’ with the person who is
grieving. However, grief can be unresolved, complicated or delayed and should not be regarded as
something to get over or recover from. The aim of grief counselling is not to prevent stress or to
try to get the person to ‘let go’ or ‘leave the past behind’. Rather it aims to promote competence;
grief should be considered as a process that occurs during a person’s life cycle, so it is assumed that
people already have skills and abilities they can use to help them through the process.
Grief is a beneficial process as it can provide continuing bonds with the person who has died, and
these bonds are dynamic and changing. These bonds can provide continuity, comfort and solace.
It is impossible to predict how an individual will respond to the death of someone for whom
they cared. The following table provides some guidance as to how people make meaning of
their grief, loss and bereavement.
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