Grief Work for the Patients and their Families in an Acute Hospital : Social Work Assessment by "the Three Observation Axes"

Abstract

In this research, we proposed to examine, in terms of grief work after the loss of the patients' body functions, the words and behaviors of patients and their families who troubled medical staff of an acute hospital and consider the social work assessment. Analyzing the observation scene records of their words and behaviors on the basis of the three theories of grief work (Kubler-Ross, E., Worden, J.W. and Fukuyama, K.) as "the observation axes", we found the following three major characteristics: 1. The process of grief work often stays at the levels of denial and anger. 2. The patients and their families make efforts rather to adapt themselves to their future life than to recognize their present losses. 3. Their main complaints consist of the needs of bodily aspects. In the acute hospital, the patients and their families do not accept the fact of the series of losses but work on their adaptation to future life, and even when their internal problems are real, they try to attract medical staffs' attention to their external problems. These contradictions seem to suggest the importance of social work assessment on the basis of the three theories of grief work as "the three observation axes".