Experience of Grief and Coping Strategies Following Patients’ Death among Nurses Working in a Tertiary Level Hospital, Kathmandu, Nepal

Abstract

Grief is feelings and emotions to loss that individuals might experience as they attempt to accept the loss. Like general people, nurses also experience such grief as they have to face the situations of many patients’ loss at hospital. Prolonged grief can cause a decline in productivity, increase absenteeism, job turnover, and pose physical and mental health risks among nurses. Hence, the study aimed to explore the experience of grief and the use of coping strategies among the nurses following patients’ deaths. A descriptive study design was carried out among 111 registered nurses working in different departments of Manmohan Cardiothoracic Vascular and Transplant Center (MCVTC), Maharajgunj, Kathmandu, Nepal using a non-probability enumerative sampling technique. A structured, self-administered questionnaire was used to collect the data. The respondents obtained the highest percentage of mean score on experience of grief on feeling (45.55%). Among the respondents, 40.9% use social support, 76.53% engage in the care of other patients, 74.55% form personal goals, 45.08% use self-help method, and 70.76% use the self-assessment method to cope with the death of a patient. The conclusion of the study emphasized how critical it is to comprehend nurses’ grieving processes when patients pass away in order to help them identify and manage psychological stress.