Chapter 6: Family Responses
Overview:
- Explanation of the situation of close family bonds and how they deal with placing their loved one in a nursing home
- Reasons as to why family members would be absent, even at the time of death
- How differing cultures may choose to do the basic caring things
- How nurses can help visitors cope with the stress of seeing the resident dying
- Guidance for nurses on visiting the bereaved family members
- How couples may cope with separation in the nursing home
- Discusses why visitors may never come back to the nursing home after their resident dies
Description:
This chapter is about families and how they visit, when they visit, and if they visit at all. The chapter opens with a discussion of the vital pre-admission visit. The stories that are included highlight the dilemma of some families when the primary reason for visiting the nursing home is gone - when the resident has died.
Topics:
- Family responses
- Mother and daughter: old-old and old
- The absent family: wouldn’t you think they’d visit at a time like this?
- Cultural considerations: bread of life
- Visitors: I’m not the only one
- The bereavement visit: send my love to all the girls
- Couples: the milk carter and his wife
- Unfinished business: coming back
Speaker / Author:
Rosalie Hudson
Rosalie Hudson is Director off Nursing at Harold McCracken House in Melbourne, Australia, where a palliative care philosophy provides the framework for the care of residents who are dying, and a partnership philosophy guides all relationships. Rosalie’s postgraduate research in gerontic nursing and theology has stimulated further insights for several journal articles and for this second book on living and dying in a nursing home. Personhood, death and community are the themes for her PhD thesis, inspired by the ordinary and extraordinary experiences in a rather special nursing home. Rosalie is married with a daughter, two sons, two daughters-in-law and three grandchildren.
Jennifer Richmond
Jennifer Richmond’s first career was in nursing. In hindsight, she says, the highlight of her nursing years was a long association with Melbourne’s Harold McCracken House. During this time her creative partnership with Rosalie yielded a valued friendship and a number of nursing publications. At Harold McCracken House Jennifer worked with many extraordinary and gifted staff, one of whom is novelist Michel Faber whose photographs appear in this book. After the privilege of an editing association with Ausmed Publications and a postgraduate qualification in editing and writing, Jennifer now writes fiction and works part-time as an in house medical and scientific editor for a major publisher. She lives in inner city Melbourne with her family, which includes dogs Minnie and John.
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