Challenges of Visiting Nurses in Providing Grief Care for Family Caregivers in Japan

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore and describe the challenges related to providing grief care. Based on the study findings, ways to improve the provision of grief care are presented. Focus group interviews were conducted with thirteen visiting nurses who had experience in providing grief care. The data were recorded and analyzed using content analysis. In the results, the difficulties for the home-visit nurses in implementing grief care were that while “it was difficult to support a bereaved family when their daily lives became unstable after the death”, “nurses could not adequately provide grief care because they lacked systems for coordination”, and “nurses felt burdened providing grief care”. Future challenge to provide grief care were that “nurses devise an approach for grief care that is suited to the workplace”, “there should be social resources supporting bereaved families”, and “it would be good to develop into a reflective grief care provider”.

These results indicated nurses’ difficulties in providing grief care. To improve nurses’ grief care it is important to improve community bereavement support systems through cooperation among the home care team, use of psychological specialists, and communication among bereaved persons.