Episode 315: Processing Grief as an Oncology Nurse

“I think the reality is that we as humans are having a human experience, some of which is incredible and some of which is terrible. And to deny ourselves the opportunity to feel any of those emotions would be to deny our own human experience. And so processing feelings, and I think the bigger ones in particular, like grief, especially in the work that we do, it’s not only good to do, but it’s part of just what it means to, I think, be a human,” Ann Konkoly, MBA, MSN, APRN-CNM, chief executive officer of Authentic Koaching LLC and Kultivate Women’s Health LLC, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS^®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a conversation about processing grief in a healthcare context.

Music Credit: “Fireflies and Stardust” by Kevin MacLeod

Licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0 

The planners and faculty for this episode have no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies to disclose. ONS is accredited as a provider of NCPD by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation.

Learning outcome: Learners will report an increase in knowledge related to processing grief.

Episode Notes 

• The NCPD activity for this episode has expired, but you can still earn NCPD through many other ONS Podcast episodes. Find a full list of opportunities.
• Oncology Nursing Podcast episodes:
  • Episode 264: Stop the Stressors and Improve Your Mental Health as a Nurse
  • Episode 236: Coping With Grief
  • Episode 187: The Critical Need for Well-Being and Resiliency and How to Practice
• ONS Voice articles:
  • Writing Condolence Cards Supports Nurses as Well as Deceased Patients’ Families
  • When Grief Goes Beyond Burnout, Organizations Must Intervene
  • Peer Groups Offer a Safe Space for Oncology Nurses to Share Lived Experiences
  • Critical Event Debriefings Can Reduce Oncology Nurses’ Risk of Compassion Fatigue and Burnout
  • Moral Injury and Trauma in Nursing: What You’re Feeling Is More Than Compassion Fatigue, but You’re Not Alone
  • Achieve a Healthy Work-Life Balance With These ONS Member-Tested Techniques
  • Involve All Populations in the Nurse Well-Being Conversation
• Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing articles:
  • Complicated Grief: Risk Factors, Interventions, and Resources for Oncology Nurses
  • Songs for the Soul: A Program to Address a Nurse's Grief
  • A Concept Analysis of Nurses’ Grief
  • Helping Nurses Cope With Grief and Compassion Fatigue: An Educational Intervention
• ONS Nurse Well-Being Learning Library
• ONS Huddle Card: Moral Resilience
• American Association of Colleges of Nursing: End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium
• Nurses Living the Good Life podcast
• Tara Brach: RAIN (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture) Technique
• Books mentioned in this episode:
  • Permission to Feel by Mark Brackett
  • Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown
  • Take Back Your Brain by Kara Loewentheil
• Feelings Wheel

To discuss the information in this episode with other oncology nurses, visit the ONS Communities.

To find resources for creating an ONS Podcast Club in your chapter or nursing community, visit the ONS Podcast Library.

To provide feedback or otherwise reach ONS about the podcast, email [e-mail].

Highlights From This Episode

“Processing is just what we do with these big feelings or these small feelings that come up and how we work through them. And it really depends on the individual and what coping tools and mechanisms that they use. But usually for a lot of people, what we see is that when there is some sort of feeling—like grief—that comes along, one of the most important things that we can do is just to, number one, acknowledge that we are having some sort of a feeling and to then subsequently name it.” TS 2:05

“The brain, usually the limbic system, is driven by these three main things that it wants you to do at all times: It wants you to seek pleasure—number one. Number two, it wants you to avoid pain. And number three, it wants you to conserve energy. … And so from an evolutionary standpoint, it totally makes sense that when faced with a feeling like grief, the limbic system drives us to say, ‘Let’s avoid all that pain, because that feels really heavy and hard, and it’s going to take a lot of energy.’ And so many of us from a purely, you know, as a human approach to things that cause pain, we usually turn away from them.” TS 17:18

“For those of us out there who find we’re somewhat ill equipped and our partners or our colleagues are saying, ‘Boy, what’s going on?’ and we don’t know, the next step is to say, ‘Well, wait a minute. Who can help me kind of figure this out?’ And I think whether it’s therapy, whether it’s a coach, whether it’s a trusted mentor or colleague that you could have a very honest conversation with, whether it’s your employee assistance program that provides you with some resources and support, there’s no right or wrong way to go about it.” TS 26:45

“We have good data to say just the act of naming a feeling can be so helpful, can decrease our symptoms of that emotion by about 50%, which is crazy. Just from naming it, just from acknowledging that there’s a vibration there in your body and then naming it as like, ‘Oh, that vibration, that feeling that I have in my body that equates to grief or shame or discouragement.’” TS 32:58

“Are you willing to train your brain to see it differently and to make it work for you, and to find a way that it can work for you, and that you can think differently and that you can change your mindset? Because if you can do that, if you can learn to allow your feelings to come up and process them like grief when they come, if you can observe what you do in certain situations and what you don’t do—if you are willing to do that, you could go anywhere and do anything.” TS 43:06