Grief is a normal behavioral and emotional response to loss. Interprofessional health profession trainees care for patients and families who are grieving and experience grief themselves. The consequences of unrecognized or under-supported provider grief are significant, including decreased engagement with families, compassion fatigue, and burnout. Despite this, barriers to supporting trainee grief persist, in part due to 1) a lack of training to empathize and communicate with grieving people and 2) cultural expectations of what constitutes appropriate emotional expression by care providers. It is a critical educational opportunity, for the sake of our trainees and their patients, to shine a light on the humanness and normality of the grieving healthcare provider and implement ways to support them through the inevitable losses that they will encounter in medicine.

Invited Speakers:

Erin Hickey, MD
Attending Physician, Pediatric Advanced Care Team, Saint Louis Children’s Hospital
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Washington University School of Medicine

Overall, participants will be able to:

• Recognize different manifestations of grief in health profession trainees
• Develop an approach to supporting a trainee experiencing grief using the TEARS framework
• Brainstorm programmatic changes that can improve support for interdisciplinary trainees experiencing grief

Register here