What is it about?
We wanted to understand how employees make sense of and manage their personal grief related to resident deaths. Based on interviewing 12 health care aides and 13 nurses, we concluded that these employees often struggled to find the time and space to deal with feelings of grief at work. Moreover, professional expectations appeared to limit grief expression at work and with co-workers, with grief sometimes being seen as weakness.
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Why is it important?
Understanding how health care organizations and professional norms influence the expression of grief by employees can help us better understand how to support employees and maintain their well-being.
Perspectives
Our research participants shared detailed stories about their experiences and emotions at work. Researchers, managers, and the general public often do not tend to recognize or value the emotional labour of by health care employees - instead the focus on the care tasks they do. This article helped to shine light on how employees caring for dying persons and their families also engage in the difficult work of managing their personal grief and professional expectations.
Laura Funk
University of Manitoba
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Emotional Labor of Personal Grief in Palliative Care: Balancing Caring and Professional Identities, Qualitative Health Research, September 2017, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1049732317729139.
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