Clinician Grief

Abstract: While much has been written about burnout and moral distress, clinician grief remains an underexamined phenomenon. Clinician grief has unique features that differentiate it from the grief that individuals feel in response to personal loss. Patient deaths may challenge a clinician’s sense of professional efficacy, disrupt deeply held belief structures, and provoke personal reflections on mortality. A clinician’s coping process is shaped by team and institutional dynamics, past experience with loss, and personal factors. Clinicians, who are expected to remain objective and resilient in the face of challenging clinical circumstances, may struggle to acknowledge and cope with grief. Moreover, clinician grief is frequently disenfranchised: it may not be socially recognized or seen as legitimate. Clinicians struggling to cope in the absence of support and legitimization can face personal and professional repercussions, and clinician grief can also impact patient care.

Clinical ethicists, given their frequent participation in emotionally charged cases, close involvement with dying patients and their families, and shared responsibility for potentially conflict-laden decisions, are particularly vulnerable to unaddressed grief. Ethicists also engage with clinicians whose moral reasoning and decision-making may be shaped by grief.

This presentation will examine the impact of unaddressed grief on clinicians, patients, and institutional culture. It will cover a conceptual model of clinician grief and coping, review existing data on interventions designed to support coping, and explore the ethical and institutional responsibility to provide support. By deepening our understanding of clinician grief, we can provide better care for our colleagues, our dying patients, and ourselves.

Keywords: Grief, Palliative care