Aileen H. Labram, Bridget Johnston, Margaret McGuire

An integrative literature review examining the key elements of bereavement follow-up interventions in critical care

  • Critical Care and Intensive Care Medicine
  • Oncology (nursing)
  • Oncology
  • General Medicine
Save to CiteDrive Show PDF

Purpose of review The aim of this review is to examine bereavement follow-up intervention studies in critical care, with the purpose of integrating results on the timing, content, aims and outcomes of interventions. The impact of a death in critical care is well documented, and bereavement follow-up is recognised as an important topic, but there is limited research with little consensus on the content and structure of interventions. Recent findings A total of 18 papers were selected; 11 are intervention studies, with only one randomised control trial. Six papers were from national surveys and are not the focus of this review. Bereavement follow-up mainly consisted of information giving, condolence interventions, telephone calls and meetings with families. The timing, content, aims and outcomes depended on the intervention and were influenced by the design of the study. Summary Overall, bereavement follow-up is acceptable for relatives but outcomes are mixed. Calls for more research are valid, but how do we utilise the current research to better inform the critical care community? Researchers suggest that bereavement follow-up interventions need to be designed with specific aims and outcomes, in collaboration with bereaved families that are appropriate to the intervention.

Need a simple solution for managing your BibTeX entries? Explore CiteDrive!

  • Web-based, modern reference management
  • Collaborate and share with fellow researchers
  • Integration with Overleaf
  • Comprehensive BibTeX/BibLaTeX support
  • Save articles and websites directly from your browser
  • Search for new articles from a database of tens of millions of references
Try out CiteDrive

More from our Archive