Nurse's role in dealing with the bereaved family member

Abstract

The aim was to describe the actions of the nursing team provided to the bereaved family member. Descriptive integrative review study with a qualitative approach. The inclusion criteria adopted in this review are articles in Brazilian Portuguese, available free of charge and in full on the Internet, published within a 10-year retroactive period. The exclusion criteria covered duplicate articles and articles that did not address the object of this study. Data collection was done based on an analytical framework, which contains title, author, database, objectives, methodology, main results, and conclusions and was subjected to Bardin's content analysis. The search returned 748 articles, and after the screening process, this quantity was reduced to 10. From these, two categories were obtained: Communication and its importance in palliative care for the patient and family in the grieving process and Perception of health professionals regarding care in a situation of mourning. Effective communication is one of the fastest ways to good care, so the nursing team needs to be involved in the process of death and dying of patients, offering them and their families individualized attention focused on the exchange of knowledge and experiences.