Assessing Pediatric Resident Needs in Grief and Bereavement Education

Pediatric residents care for dying children during training. Few educational efforts focus on helping trainees better understand their own grief process and the supports available to them and their patients' families.

This work aims to assess pediatric residents' needs and preferences for content included in a curriculum on grief and bereavement.

Pediatric residents, at a single institution, completed an electronic survey in Spring 2023 on how they cope with patient deaths and their preferences on content in a proposed grief and bereavement curriculum.

The survey was emailed to 165 current or recent trainees; 71 surveys were fully completed (43% response rate). Most respondents (63/71, 89%) indicated that a formalized bereavement curriculum for pediatric residents is important. The resources most frequently utilized by residents following a pediatric death included peer support (59/71, 83%), attending a debrief coordinated by residency leadership or the supportive care division (38/71, 54%), and reading a patient's obituary (23/71, 32%). The most desired content areas were institutional services provided to bereaved families (66/71, 93%), unique aspects of healthcare professional grief (58/71, 82%), and experiences of bereaved families hearing from providers after their child's death (56/71, 79%).

Pediatric residents indicate a strong desire for structured curricula on grief and bereavement focusing on resources that exist for families, approaches to grieving as a healthcare professional, and better understanding the experiences of bereaved families. These data may inform educators on priorities in training and support of pediatric residents on grief and bereavement.