Grief: A Normal Response to Loss

Abstract

Health care workers are constantly exposed to the grief of patients, families of patients, and their own reactions to the deaths of those they care for. Our society provides few rituals or guidelines for dealing with loss. While the general population can send their terminally ill to hospitals and hospices to die, we are the ones who must deal with the cumulative toll of loss. The issue of personal boundaries arises constantly as health care workers try to separate their own grief issues from the grief issues of those they care for. Only by normalizing death as a part of the life cycle can we acknowledge grief as a normal and necessary response to loss.