The Grief We Carry
NHS Education for Scotland's 4th bereavement education conference took place on Tuesday 28th November. The morning programme focussed on providing bereavement support in different circumstances (e.g., bereavement experiences of older people, children following a sudden death and those bereaved by suicide). The afternoon programme focussed on staff wellbeing and bereavement in the workplace.
Programme
Click here or on the image on the right-hand side to view the programme
Explore the conference sessions
Below you can find descriptions and short film clips from conference speakers which were recorded ahead of the event. The clips provide an overview of the sessions.
Plenary Sessions
Opening Plenary - In conversation with Cariad Lloyd
Cariad Lloyd, Host of award-winning podcast 'Griefcast' and author of 'You Are Not Alone'
Morning Plenary - The grief we carry: from childhood into adulthood
Dr Alison Penny, Director, Childhood Bereavement Network / Co-ordinator, National Bereavement Alliance
Slides to accompany the session can be viewed here.
Working with loss at a time of loss: the grief we carrying from the COVID years
Barbara-Anne Wren, Consultant Psychologist and Director, Barbara Wren Psychology Ltd
Barbara discussed her work in palliative care, working with loss during COVID-19 and how to look after and protect staff during the afternoon plenary.
Click on the image to watch the video or here to view it on the NHS Education for Scotland Vimeo channel.
A transcript of this video can be found here.
Closing Plenary - 'Words: The most powerful drug used by mankind'
Dr Rachel Clarke, Palliative Care Doctor and author of three Sunday Times bestselling non-fiction books
Morning Parallel Sessions: Providing Bereavement Support
Walk a mile in mine
Donna Hastings, Child and Families Lead, St Columba's Hospice Care
Ailsa Hill, School Counsellor, MYPAS (Midlothian Young Person’s Advisory Service)
Following on from two successful high school projects with young people, this session offered participants the opportunity to explore and express how to convey to others how it might feel to walk a mile in their shoes, to better understand them and to be able to support them and their needs using creative resources. Often, especially when we are bereaved, we can feel lonely and isolated in grief.
This session afforded the opportunity to consider how it might support us if we had a way of being able to share with friends / family / colleagues how they might be more able to better support us in our grief if they were able to understand more from our perspective.
Click on the image to watch the video or here to view it on the NHS Education for Scotland Vimeo channel.
A transcript of this video can be found here.
Slides to accompany the session can be viewed here.
The Stories We Live By: Two creative innovations in baby loss bereavement support
Dr Tamarin Norwood, Leverhulme Research Fellow, Loughborough University
Nicola Welsh, Chief Executive, Held in Our Hearts
This session reflected upon the design, delivery and evaluation of two innovations in baby loss bereavement care: a creative writing group, and packs of keepsake writing prompts included in Held In Our Hearts (HIOH) memory bags, distributed by HIOH and NHS hospital midwives. These low-cost and impactful innovations were funded, created and distributed through a collaboration between HIOH and Loughborough University in 2020-23.
Baby loss is too often unsupported by the social rituals, traditions, and acknowledgements we depend upon to make sense of death, leaving parents isolated and at higher risk of pathological bereavement trajectories. These innovations help parents make up for this lack of social traditions and narratives by supporting them to create their own: capturing, exploring and sharing fleeting impressions and memories. They are making an impact, for instance helping plan a funeral, reducing anxiety, improving sleep, aiding return to work.
Click on the image to watch the video or here to view it on the NHS Education for Scotland Vimeo channel.
A transcript of this video can be found here.
Slides to accompany the session can be viewed here.
Talking to children who have been bereaved by sudden death
Rich Stafford, Head of Development, Child Bereavement UK
Kirstin O'Neill, Bereavement Support Team Lead, NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde / Child Bereavement UK
Around 13 children and young people are bereaved of a parent every single day in Scotland (and around 127 every day in UK). Many more children will experience the death of a sibling, grandparent or other important person.
Bereavement can be devastating at any age and a sudden death can bring an additional layer of complex feelings for a child. With no chance to say goodbye, there may be regrets over lost opportunities and altered futures. Children may need support to begin to make sense of what has happened.
This session considered the impact of a sudden death. It addressed feelings, thoughts and behaviours; the language we use to discuss death; sudden deaths (including through accident, suicide, violence, physical causes, stillbirth) and the ways in which these can affect grieving.
Suicide Bereavement Support Service - Scottish Government Pilot Project
Lara Van De Peer, Suicide Bereavement Support Service Project Manager, Change Mental Health
Annie Lawson, Suicide Bereavement Support Service Practitioner, Change Mental Health
The Suicide Bereavement Support (SBS) Service is a Scottish Government funded pilot delivering support across Highland and Argyll & Bute, and Ayrshire & Arran. The service provides bereavement support to anyone affected by suicide.
This session provided an overview of the SBS service with a focus on who is accessing the service; the type of support provided and how it is offered; how the practitioner team is supported to deliver the service; and as the service potentially moves towards a national roll out, what the next steps for a wider delivery may look like. The session used case studies and examples of service user journeys to demonstrate, what can often be the profound impact of using the service. The residual impact on practitioners and how the service uses best practice to support staff will also be explored.
Click on the image to watch the video or here to view it on the NHS Education for Scotland Vimeo channel.
A transcript of this video can be found here.
Bereavement experiences of older people
Dr Caroline Pearce, Research Fellow, Advanced Care Research Centre University of Edinburgh
Bereavement experiences are often categorised as ‘normal’ or ‘non-normative’, ‘sudden’ or ‘expected’, with bereavement in later life viewed as a normal and expected part of getting older. Yet bereavement can have just as significant of an impact on a person’s life and health in older age as at any other stage of the life course. Indeed, bereaved older adults may be at increased risk of social isolation, loneliness, and physical and mental health complications. This session focussed on these often hidden bereavement experiences of older people by exploring the research evidence and first-hand accounts, to work towards developing improved support and care for older people experiencing grief and bereavement.
Slides to accompany the session can be viewed here.
A primary care approach to bereavement: developing an educational resource for clinicians
Dr Sheena Sharma, Associate GP Dean, Thames Valley / NHSE and Senior GP Partner and GP Trainer in Oxford (Bartlemas Surgery), specialist interest in Bereavement Care
Dr Lynsey Bennett, GP in Oxford and Bereavement Care Fellow Thames Valley and Wessex Primary Care School
Managing loss is bread and butter GP work but it can instil feelings of helplessness and be viewed as demanding of our time. Excellent resources exist for the public, for therapists and psychiatrists but not really for GPs and the topic is scarcely covered in medical and GP education. An educational resource for clinicians is in development which draws on current grief theory and examines how we might use our short GP consultations to support our bereaved patients through the psychological and physical manifestations of loss over months and years. As such, a toolkit which highlights 3 ‘points’ during the grief journey has been designed and aims to give clinician ‘tools’ they can reach for when they are feeling powerless that fit with our modern understandings of grief.
Click on the image to watch the video or here to view it on the NHS Education for Scotland Vimeo channel.
A transcript of this video can be found here.
Slides to accompany the session can be viewed here.
Afternoon Parallel Sessions: Staff wellbeing / Bereavement in the workplace
'She felt like she'd had a weight taken off her back': Providing support with grief and practice-based learning after a death in a care home
Dr Julie Watson, Clinical Lead Care Home Programme, Marie Curie Scotland
Lucy Johnston, Senior Research Fellow, Edinburgh Napier University
Maggie Byers-Smith, Lead Nurse, QI & Standards, Care Homes and Primary Care, NHS Lothian
Dying is a normal part of life in care homes and because care home care is relationship-centred, care home staff often grieve the loss of those in their care. Online Supportive Conversations and Reflective Sessions (OSCaRS) with care home staff are a structured approach that have been found to be an acceptable and feasible way to provide support around grief alongside practice-based learning after the death of a person receiving care in a care home (Johnston et al 2022). They can be facilitated from outwith the care home by a professional with palliative care expertise or a nurse who has undertaken bespoke facilitator training. This session shared experiences and learning from a 2 year project from inception to roll out in one Health Board area and participants will explore and discuss with presenters how to best support end of life care through in-reach into care homes.
Click on the image to watch the video or here to view it on the NHS Education for Scotland Vimeo channel.
A transcript of this video can be found here.
Slides to accompany the session can be viewed here.
Delivering Last Aid within an NHS organisation
Keri Fickling, Clinical Effectiveness Lead Palliative and End of Life Care, Scottish Ambulance Service
Susan Speke, Last Aid Development Officer, Highland Hospice
Robbie Johnston, Clinical Effectiveness Lead Palliative and End of Life Care, Scottish Ambulance Service
Encouraging a supportive workplace environment where staff feel safe to talk about death, dying and share experiences can be a challenge in a busy NHS environment, the Last Aid course offers a half day safe space environment to nurture those conversations and develop staff into ‘Last Aiders’.
This parallel session gave an insight to the last aid course as well as how it has been implemented as a staple within a large NHS health board. Supporting staff with discussions about death and dying from an early stage and giving a safe space and point of contact will be an additional support when staff find themselves dealing with bereavement.
Click on the image to watch the video or here to view it on the NHS Education for Scotland Vimeo channel.
A transcript of this video can be found here.
National Bereavement Care Pathway - Good bereavement care and the impact on parents who have experienced pregnancy loss and / or death of a baby
Sue McKellar, National Bereavement Care Pathway Scotland Manager, Sands
Sarah Kiely, Lead Trainer, Sands
High quality bereavement care is essential for the wellbeing of those who are going through pregnancy loss or the death of their baby. The care they receive has an impact in the short term and in the longer term, on further pregnancies and relationships with health care providers. However, providing bereavement care for those going through pregnancy loss or baby death can be personally and professionally challenging. It takes training, experience, and support to build the confidence, knowledge and skills required to provide high quality care at the same time as looking after your own wellbeing. This session considered the principles of bereavement care and how healthcare staff can develop the confidence and skills to work with those who are grieving.
Slides to accompany the session can be viewed here.
A Heavy Workload to Carry - Anticipatory Grief of Staff: Staff who experience death and bereavement in their line of work
Roseann Logan, Assistant Director, Links Worker Programme, Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland
Margaret Ann Prentice, Senior Officer, Links Worker Programme, Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland
Within Primary Care and third sector organisations, person / patient-professional relationships are often long-standing and span several generations, become a natural platform to building relationships where the professional may acquire knowledge of the individual and their family, way beyond medical care.
Community Links Practitioners (CLPs) play an intrinsic role within Primary Care, along with the Deep End GPs and Practice staff, all experience death and bereavement, sometimes unexpectedly experiencing a range of emotions characterised as grief.
This session explored and informed what is or can be done to support CLPs and Primary Care Staff on accepting patients dying and in death, bearing witness to raw family grief, how they show compassion without compromising their own self-care, what is an acceptable level of resilience? And what leadership should be in place to ensure staff have collegial support to prevent lack of experience leading to guilt and poor person/patient traumatic event care.
Slides to accompany the session can be viewed here.
How to move through grief with self-compassion
Dr Wendy Simpson, Health Psychologist, NHS Fife
We will all experience grief in many ways across our lifetime. Grief is inevitable and it can be an intense, emotional, scary and difficult experience. It is not uncommon for us to become highly self-critical and unforgiving to ourselves while we are grieving. Being kind to ourselves is one of the most helpful things we can do for ourselves during bereavement.
This session described what self-compassion is, what it's not, and how it helps us, as defined in the scientific literature. Together, delegates reflected on how we can be more self-compassionate and how we can practice it in our daily lives so that it becomes a habit which can boost our wellbeing and help us cope in difficult situations.
Slides to accompany the session can be viewed here.
Training in Psychological Skills for Health and Social Care Staff Working with Children and Young People with Life-Limiting Conditions and Aspects of staff wellbeing and self-care: The work of the NES Training in Psychological Skills - Paediatric Healthcare (TIPS-PH) Programme
Dr Shona Murphy, Head of Programme - Paediatric Psychology, NHS Education for Scotland
The NES TIPS-PH programme contains a number of modules relevant to health and social care staff working with children, young people and families, when a child is dying or has died. All staff have a role in promoting psychological wellbeing for families and effective communication around death and dying is crucial to improve outcomes for the child who is dying and the family who are bereaved.
This session considered the impact of this role on staff who experience death and bereavement in the course of their work and gave an overview of the most relevant training modules offered in this regard, focusing on aspects of self-care and wellbeing for staff. The session allowed for time to reflect on staff support needs and share examples of good practice.
Posters
Click here to view all the conference posters which will be available until November 2024.
- Winner: “Your Child has Died” – Using SUDI simulation to improve staff skills and confidence in caring for bereaved families by Gill Burton and Lynsey Kidd from Scottish Cot Death Trust.
- Highly commended: Renfrewshire Bereavement Network (RBN) Town Centre Community Bereavement Hub by Joy Elliot and Susan Jackson from Accord Hospice.
- Highly commended: Narratives of Grief: The Experience and Development of Grief for Parentally Bereaved Young Adults by Dr Tim Callen, Mary John and Dr Paul Hanna from Maggie’s Centre.
- Highly commended: Returning to Work after the Death of a Baby or Child – Video for Supporting Healthcare Staff by Sam Gould, Dr Shona Johnston, Dr Judith Kalthoff and Vivienne Lee from Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.