The author offers some views on the current state of death education with focus on the sparing attention given the death education of health professionals and of grief counselors. There is need for improved integration of the knowledge accumulated in the study of death, dying, and bereavement into the basic curricula of the parent disciplines and professional schools. Facilitation of personal engagement with the issue of mortality is an important component of the educative process. Various assessment problems are outlined and some suggestions for improvements are offered. The death education needs of various groups, including school age children and older adults, are noted. The article contains a list of references, many not cited in the text, recommended for an extensive review of developments in death education.

A perspective on the current state of death education

G Pirooz Sholevar, Linda D Schwoeri (eds)Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2003ISBN 088048 518 3 pp 948 $14200Psychiatrists like Ackerman, Wynne, Lidz and Jackson were among the 

Textbook of family and couples therapy: clinical applications

Introduction Medical education experts argue that grief support training for physicians would improve physician and patient and family wellness, and should therefore be mandatory. However, there is little evidence about the range of curricula interventions or the impact of grief training. The aim of this scoping review was to describe the current landscape of grief training worldwide in medical school, postgraduate residency and continuing professional development in the disciplines of pediatrics, family medicine and psychiatry. Methods Using Arksey and O’Malley’s scoping review principles, MEDLINE, EMBASE, ERIC, PsychInfo and Web of Science were searched by a librarian. Two levels of screening took place: a title and abstract review for articles that fit a predefined criteria and a full-text review of articles that met those criteria. Three investigators reviewed the articles and extracted data for analysis. To supplement the search, we also scanned the reference lists of included studies for possible inclusion. Results Thirty-seven articles published between 1979 and 2019 were analyzed. Most articles described short voluntary grief training workshops. At all training levels, the majority of these workshops focused on transmitting knowledge about the ethical and legal dimensions of death, dying and bereavement in medicine. The grief trainings described were characterized by the use of diverse pedagogical tools, including lectures, debriefing sessions, reflective writing exercises and simulation/role-play. Discussion Grief training was associated with increased self-assessed knowledge and expertise; however, few of the studies analyzed the impact of grief training on physician and patient and family wellness. Our synthesis of the literature indicates key gaps exist, specifically regarding the limited emphasis on improving physicians’ communication skills around death and dying and the limited use of interactive and self-reflexive learning tools. Most trainings also had an overly narrow focus on bereavement grief, rather than a more broadly defined definition of loss.

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Being there: A scoping review of grief support training in medical education

Because the intense needs of the bereaved are rarely met, this article explores self‐help groups as unique social structures filling that void Understanding grief as a crisis and the role of communication in crisis resolution clarify why traditional coping techniques often fall short When natural support systems and professional helpgivers fail to meet the needs of the bereaved, self‐help groups offer alternative support Communication characteristics of bereavement groups are described Evidence argues for the effectiveness of self‐help bereavement groups Finally, directions for future communication research relevant to bereavement and self‐help groups are suggested

The circle of others: Self‐help groups for the bereaved

The Grief Recovery Method® Instrument: Development and validation for construct validity of the treatment

Effective classroom teaching, and learning about grief and mourning must involve both didactic instruction and the group dynamics of personal involvement. An appreciation of the individuality of the grieving experience must be incorporated into the broader understanding of grief in its generic aspects. In this paper such an approach is described and illustrated with verbatim excerpts from an exercise conducted with eighty participants in a workshop on helping the bereaved.

George L. Engel

Papers

A Group Dynamic Approach to Teaching and Learning about Grief.