Disenfranchised Grief In Nursing

Title: Disenfranchised grief – fact or fiction? An ethnographic exploration into nurse’s work related grief in an acute care setting.

Purpose/Design
It is expected that Registered Nurses care for all the diverse aspects of a patient’s needs including those requiring end-of-life care. Nurses are one the most visible front line worker in acute care settings and caring for the dying is ultimately the responsibility of the registered nurse. The research topic under investigation is to explore the possibilities of disenfranchised grief in registered nurses who have cared for a dying patient. Disenfranchised grief has been defined as the grief experienced by those who incur a loss that is not, or cannot be, openly acknowledged, publicly mourned …show more content…
The literature is beginning to recognizing that those in the profession of nursing, to some degree, can and may experience components of disenfranchised grief.

Key components of disenfranchised grief were influenced by William James (Foust, 2013). James, a transpersonal pioneer, believed that unexpressed emotion and certain blindness are obstacles to personal growth and can lead to mental and physical illness if blocked (Foust, 2013). The notion of emotional blocking as described by James is evidence that the concept of grief and disenfranchised grief in particular, require attention for registered nurses and the profession.

To date, it is unknown how Canadian nurses express their unresolved grief and loss when a patient dies on an acute care setting which is employed to heal patients as opposed to palliate. Wilson (2014) conducted phenomenological interviews in Sheffield, England on an acute ward. Her findings conclude that there is little literature or knowledge regarding the responses of acute care’s staff to a patient death on medical units. She additionally stated that the study revealed that disenfranchised grief exists in that the staff felt that they not recognize their own grief and that patient death was not recognized or acknowledged by managers and some colleagues” …show more content…
Ethnography in the field of nursing and in health care settings has established itself as a powerful method for understanding health care context (Leslie et al., 2013). Murphy and Dingwell (2007) explain that ethnography involves researchers spending extended periods of time in a setting such as a hospital ward, a laboratory or an outpatient clinic. The objective is to recover the “situated rationality of action” meaning the ways in which people interact or their actions (Murphy & Dingwall, 2007). In this particular study, the context of the health care system and in particular on the unit that is described above will attempt to be understood. Therefore a focused ethnography will be

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