Understanding Oncology Nurses Grief: A Qualitative Metasynthesis

Abstract

Professionals, such as nurses, that provide care may experience a negative impact on both their personal and professional lives due to grief. Grief is the emotional response of a person who has invested emotionally in someone or something and then loses that person or thing. Variations in intensity and duration of grief may occur as oncology nurses care for patients for extended periods of time, sometimes from diagnosis to death. The experience of this extended relationship makes oncology nurses particularly susceptible. This study seeks to examine oncology nurses’ grief through a qualitative meta-analysis. The many terms associated with the concept of nurses’ grief were analyzed with the goal of obtaining a more comprehensive understanding of these terms as well as presentation of what was found to be the most suitable concept and a supporting definition.