Citation

Hartley H, Wright DK, Vanderspank-Wright B, Grassau P, Murray MA. Death Stud. 2019; 43(5): 301-310.

Affiliation

The Ottawa Hospital , Ottawa , Canada.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/07481187.2018.1461711

PMID

29757122

Abstract

The practice of operating room (OR) clinicians - nurses, surgeons, and anesthetists - is fundamentally about preserving life. Some patients, however, die in the OR. Clinicians are therefore vulnerable to moral and emotional trauma. In this paper, we discuss three forces that shape clinicians' moral and emotional experiences in OR care: biomedical values, normative death discourse, and socially (un)sanctioned grief. We suggest how each of these forces increases clinicians' vulnerability to feel traumatized when their patients die. We hope this discussion will stimulate clinicians and researchers to engage with social and cultural determinants of clinicians' experiences when surgical patients die.

Language: en

Keywords

culture; death attitudes; disenfranchised grief; trauma; violent death