Good grief: a medical challenge

Abstract

Management of the bereaved is an important element in trauma care. Clinicians need to be familiar with the features of normal and pathological grief reactions. The latter have important implications for the physical and mental welfare of the bereaved. Trauma staff are not expected to provide specialist bereavement care for bereaved relations and families, but there is much they can do by way of providing information for the bereaved as well as through their attitudes and behaviour toward them. What happens in the immediate aftermath of the patient’s death is likely to influence the outcome for the bereaved. We need also to remember that grief itself is not a clinical pathology and that most individuals do learn to adjust satisfactorily without specialist help. Indeed, many will come through a bereavement the stronger.