Survey of Grief Care for Bereaved Caregivers in Visiting Nurse Stations throughout Japan

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify grief care practices for bereaved caregivers in visiting nurse stations and to consider the nursing challenges. Data were generated from a mail survey using an original researcher-developed self-administered questionnaire. Respondents were administrators of the visiting nurse stations throughout Japan, which were established by the Long-term Care Insurance Law.

Valid responses were 332 (90.7%). Regarding the duty of grief care after death as being a part of their work, which included voluntarily living in the caregivers home to provide support: 149 (44.9%) nurses said, “it is a part of work”. Of those respondents 147 (98.7%) replied that they had done grief care by home visiting after the patient’s death. Eighty percent of respondents acknowledged the need for grief care as part of their work but noted there were multifaceted challenges, for example: not enough time or staff for some of the work, economic problems, uncertainty about care methods and not enough community support for systems of grief care.

Grief care for bereaved caregivers in the visiting nurse stations was mostly one-on-one care by home visiting. It is important to respect the individuality of family caregivers, but the challenges are to manage nurses’ large workload: too much time involved, and moving to family caregiver’s home after the patient’s death is difficult.