After a child dies, does your sympathy card  genuinely reflect the person-centered care you so carefully provided?

 

Person-Centered Care & Clinician Grief

When engaging in practices of person-centered care, clinicians create meaningful therapeutic relationships with children and their families. Trust and mutual respect are developed throughout the collaborative care process. The uniqueness of an individual becomes known and experienced by the clinician. When supporting pediatric patients, this kind of connectedness can extend to the child’s family.

When a child who is well known to a clinician dies, the impact upon the clinician can be significant. Having resources and practices in place to support clinician grief is essential for their wellness and resiliency.

 

Years Later, Shared Connectedness Matters

When bereaved parents reflect upon the death of their child, many experience immense gratitude for the caring clinicians who provided genuine person-centered care during this difficult and traumatic time. When clinicians are asked to identify what sustains them long term through the difficulties of their job, many name specific children whose life impacted them in a profound way.

Parents and clinicians share a connectedness to the child that resonates long after the death. In grief, this is one of the sustaining gifts of providing meaningful person-centered care.

 

Common Sympathy Cards Fall Short

Sympathy cards are one of the most familiar grief care practices in hospital settings. This provides clinicians with an opportunity to pause and honor the child who has died. Writing and sending a sympathy card has long been acknowledged as important care for both bereaved families and clinician’s grief.

Unfortunately, the language of common sympathy cards falls short by failing to acknowledge the unique meaningful relationships formed in person-centered care practices. Most cards focus on the “loss”, offer “sympathy” and a “hope” of comfort from cherished memories. This leaves clinicians with the burden of writing a meaningful message within a generic sympathy card for a child whom they experienced a unique connectedness. Meanwhile, bonds of trust with bereaved families can be impacted when sympathy cards fail to recognize meaningful relationships.

 

From Sympathy to Connectedness

Bereaved Parent Advocate and Clinician Educator, Dannell Shu, is shifting the narrative of sympathy cards from apology toward compassion and connectedness. Through RedBird she creates cards uniquely focused on the strength of meaningful relationships developed through patient-centered care between pediatric clinicians and families. RedBird’s Compassion Cards highlight connectedness and provide pediatric clinicians the opportunity to directly extend person-centered care into bereavement care.

 

Invitation

Connect with Dannell Shu about opportunities for piloting RedBird’s Compassion Cards within your hospital and tracking how they improve practices supporting clinician grief and wellness.

 

Dannell.Shu@RedBirdTime.com