grief and bereavement in the adult palliative care setting
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This article was downloaded by: [The University Of Melbourne Libraries]On: 11 October 2014, At: 16:58Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Mortality: Promoting theinterdisciplinary study of death anddyingPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cmrt20
Grief and bereavement in the adultpalliative care settingJohn Wilsonab
a Saint Catherine’s Hospice, Scarborough, UKb York St. John UniversityPublished online: 18 Jun 2014.
To cite this article: John Wilson (2014) Grief and bereavement in the adult palliative caresetting, Mortality: Promoting the interdisciplinary study of death and dying, 19:3, 318-319, DOI:10.1080/13576275.2014.929568
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2014.929568
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Book Reviews
Grief and bereavement in the adult palliative care setting, by E. Alessandra
Strada, New York, Oxford University Press, 2013, 118 pp., $34.99 (paperback), ISBN
978-0-19-976892-9
Firmly and convincingly evidence-based, this succinct book is a useful resource for
those working with death and dying. It paints a balanced picture of research
findings in the field of loss and grief, coloured with the author’s considerable
experience of working with dying patients and their families. Her position is that all
palliative care professionals should learn to recognise the nature and variety of grief
reactions and grieving styles, so as to provide effective support. She values the dif-
fering roles and patient relationships within properly coordinated cross-disciplinary
teams, including responsibility for knowing when to refer to grief specialists. Two
messages from the book come as a breath of fresh air; the author’s belief that grief
education should be a feature of a family’s palliative care, and her view that the
patient should be supported therapeutically throughout the clinical needs assessment
as part of a process of matching therapeutic intervention to individual need. The
author distinguishes between grief counselling for normal grief and grief-focused
psychotherapy for complicated grief: distinctions not all bereavement support
practitioners will concur with, particularly those still to be convinced of the reality
of complicated grief. The penultimate chapter is a well-researched account of
pharmacological interventions, and the book concludes with an exhortation for clini-
cian self-care.
In spite of its excellent content and important messages, the book is let down by
some features of the design. On the positive side, chapters are headed with focus
points to provide a clear view of what the author wishes to communicate. Key points
made in each chapter are summarised in clearly understandable tables. Less helpful
are the densely packed words, small font and limited white space, which could make
reading this book a chore, particularly for those initially unconvinced of its value.
Even indenting the case studies and setting them in a different font would have
helped. In mitigation, the position of the page numbers and the vertical headers make
it very easy to thumb through.
The author uses short and to-the-point sentence structure. The case studies can
only have been constructed by meticulous and sensitive observation, yet it took
empathic reading between the lines to tease out the author’s compassion for her
patients. These brief glimpses into her caring practice easily get lost in a style that is so
unremittingly clinical. For example, a particularly jarring sentence on page 32 describes
a baby ‘with a congenital heart defect deemed incompatible with survival’. The
author’s stated intention is to provide a tool for all palliative care providers, yet some
Mortality, 2014
Vol. 19, No. 3, 318–321
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team members may be disenfranchised by the clinical, rather than inspirational style.
In a work with such potential, this seems a shame.
John Wilson
Saint Catherine’s Hospice, Scarborough, UK
York St. John University
© John Wilson
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2014.929568
Death, dying, and social differences (2nd edition), edited by David Oliviere,
Barbara Monroe and Sheila Payne, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011, 226 pp.,
£36.99 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-19-959929-5
If you want to be challenged to think seriously about the diversity and disparity of
dying experiences, read this volume. Making a contribution to examining ‘the social
aspects of palliative care’ (p. 3) it explores the complex relationships between structural
inequality and barriers to receiving support at the end of life. At times it makes for
sobering reading, offering a collection of insightful, clearly evidenced and cogently
argued examples of what it is like to exist at the margins and to die there. Although the
primary audience is clearly those involved in palliative care (mainly practitioners but
also policy-makers and researchers), the book is essentially an appraisal of social justice
at the end of life and would engage anyone with an interest in addressing inequality –
professionally, intellectually or personally.
Divided into two clear parts, Part 1 offers a contextual backdrop for the more spe-
cific examples in Part 2 which explore the situation of particular disadvantaged social
groups. In Part 1, the reader is introduced to key themes such as geography and space,
communication, poverty, social relationships and embracing diversity. Then, if so
inclined, they can read on and consider how these themes reoccur and interplay with
the experiences described in Part 2. For instance, in Turner and Payne’s chapter on
palliative care for prisoners, the spatial and geographical needs of patients are consid-
ered. Readers also revisit the issue of communication in Tuffery-Wijne’s discussion
about individuals with intellectual disabilities, and in another chapter by Dodds on the
experiences of asylum seekers and refugees. A useful aspect of the way this text is
structured is that any of these chapters remain substantively informative if read in isola-
tion. Whilst in Part 2, there is only space to provide ‘snap shots’ of different social
groups, taken together these chapters provide a comprehensive overview which inter-
weaves UK and international perspectives of disadvantage. Certainly, there is enough
here to introduce the reader to the key issues facing a number of different groups, with
each chapter in Part 2 providing contextual information (historical, policy, demo-
graphic) which renders the more specific points about end of life meaningful.
Unfortunately, what this text has to say is just as relevant presently as when the title
was first published, in 2004. Resonating across the pages is recognition of the complex-
ity of translating aspirations in policy around high-quality end-of-life care for all (End
of Life Care Strategy, 2008) into lived experiences. And whilst as the editors acknowl-
edge, the volume poses more questions than it does answers, to try and distil some of
Book Reviews 319
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