In this journal/research assignment, you the (clinical social worker) will need to choose a specific patient, family member, or family as a whole. You will need to discuss your impressions of them, their support system, and either some aspect of death and dying, and/or their experience with pain and other symptoms. That is, you should provide a bio-psycho-social-spiritual assessment; it does not need to be thorough and completely comprehensive, but it should address what you consider to be the more important aspects that clinicians should be aware of.
Your assignment is to interview someone with whom you have a relationship about their own grief experiences. Ask them to think about a loss they’ve experienced and answer the following questions.
***These questions are meant to be a guideline to generate discussion and include the responses to these questions in your narrative research paper. Ask your own open ended questions that would allow your loved one to explore their grief and healing***
1. Talk about your relationship with this person before their death. What did you love about them? What were they like? What characteristics made them special to you?
2. Talk about the circumstances surrounding the death of your special person. If they were sick, discuss how you found out about the diagnosis. If it was sudden/trauma discuss how you found out.
3. Discuss your immediate reactions/emotions after hearing of their death. How did you feel? If time has passed since then discuss the changes in your emotions over time
4. Was there a part of your grief process (their birthday, hearing a song, change of seasons etc.) that was harder than you’d expected? Talk about the milestones such as these that you’ve experienced
5. How did others around you grieve? Were there emotions or reactions that you shared? Differed? How did losing this person/your grief affect your family?
6. What do you miss the most?
7. If you could have one last conversation with this person, what would you want them to know? What would you want to hear?
8. Can you talk about how you’ve healed since losing them? What has helped?
Following this, you will need to identify an intervention (e.g., medical crisis counseling, forgiveness therapy, existential psychotherapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy for chronic illness and palliative care) that is not currently being used and describe how it might be applied to address this unmet need in working with 1) the specific patient, family member(s), and/or their support system you have chosen. Once you have thought about this, you should share your final insights about how the intervention might be used.
This paper must include the following:
• 6 pages
• Double spaced
• APA Style
• Minimum of 5 references. References should focus on Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy, Understanding Dying, Death and Bereavement.
• Narrative format