The Grief and Bereavement Workstream in NES has been requested by the Conference of Postgraduate Medical Deans of the United Kingdom (COPMeD) to develop a package of training resources on managing the sudden death of a doctor in training.

This will be made available for Deanery teams and educators to utilise via the Deaneries across the four UK nations.  

This might include resources on e.g., how best to effectively communicate news to other trainees and staff who are affected and how to promote appropriate staff support and information on interactions with the family who are bereaved (such as agreeing core content for a condolence letter). 

This work will include collaborative working across the four nations to identify gaps, needs and priorities. A Development Group (DG), and an Expert Advisory Group (EAG) have been established, co-Chaired by Dr Mary Murnaghan (HSCNI) and Dr Ian Collings (HEI Wales).

The EAG will be tasked with providing guidance on the development of the resources and the DG will then undertake focussed work to move the learning resource development forward.

The project is currently at a very early stage, and we will provide further updates as the work progresses.