This study underscores the need to carefully evaluate our palliative care and bereavement approaches and for individual clinicians to sensitively gauge parents' needs, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.
The challenges posed by the increasing ageing population and feminisation of ageing and bereavement necessitate innovative approaches at individual, community, organisational, and policy levels.
Those rare books that address grief and bereavement for young children often approach the subject obliquely or from a distance.
In addition we have collaborated with the hospital bereavement services who will initially approach next of kin and invite them to participate in the study.
Indeed, approaching people during bereavement requires careful negotiation.
We shall use mixed methods to collect fine-grained qualitative and quantitative data on the experiences of people with advanced dementia and their carers as death approaches and in bereavement.
Participants were recruited from nine National Health Service (NHS) hospitals in the UK and approached via their bereavement midwife who had received training, information and support from study personnel to ensure that they were comfortable explaining the purpose and protocol of the study.
It helped to be offered the chance, though, says psychotherapist Gabrielle Syme, who, with Susan Lendrum, wrote Gift of Tears: A Practical Approach to Loss and Bereavement Counselling (Routledge).
Is what is currently offered by SPCHS really specialist bereavement services or simply a 'bereavement approach' to people after they have experienced an expected death?
This ranges from death and dying, symptom assessment, bereavement, communication to complementary and alternative approaches and a focus on different groups and populations.
It is always a delicate matter to approach people who have experienced bereavement, for the purpose of research.
