Grief support for nursing staff in the ICU

Patient death is a stressful experience for the patient, family, and the healthcare team. Nurses-often have only informal resources for coping with the sadness and grief they might experience. Realizing the need for nursing grief support, a group of staff nurses from the intensive care unit formed a grief support group. Using information from the literature and critical incident stress debriefing, the group developed support interventions to aid intensive care unit staff after patient death.