TNEEL-NE

Anticipatory Grief

Learning Activities

Activity 1: Attend a support group

Ask your students to do the following:

  1. Attend a support group for family caregivers (usually available at local hospitals or non-profit agencies).
  2. Analyze the content of the support group discussion.
  3. Estimate how much of the time was spent on the following topics:
  • Caregiving tasks;
  • Interacting with the healthcare system about the patient;
  • Communications with the patient;
  • Relationship issues with the patient and other family members, emotional reactions to the situation, anticipatory grief related issues (such as imagining life without the person).
  1. Develop other categories if they arose in the group.
  2. List examples of the topics that were discussed under each broad category.

Activity 2: Design a six-session 2-hour class

Divide up students into groups of three.

  1. Have the students design a six-session 2-hour class for family members of people with a terminal illness.
  2. Students should answer the following questions:
  • What topics would you include and why?
  • How would you structure the class regarding lecture, discussion, etc?
  1. Each group will report the design to share with the whole class.

Activity 3: Case study: The Simmons Family

Divide students into groups of 3 and ask them to read the case study of the Simmons family. Choose one option shown below.

Option 1:

  • Ask each group to develop further the story of the Simmons family (that was discussed in the lecture) to illustrate common aspects of anticipatory grieving (i.e. the balance of staying attached yet beginning to create a life that will accommodate the absence of the ill person.
  • Develop each character in the story and how each is responding to the father’s illness.

Option 2:

  • Ask each group to develop further the case of the Simmons family.
  • Assign each group one of the characters and ask them to complete the story from the viewpoint of the family member they were assigned.

As each small group presents their story to the class, have the students write down the components of anticipatory grieving that are exemplified in the stories.

Activity 4: Outside-of-class assignment: Tasks caregivers face

1.Have the students interview someone from him/her own family that has been a caregiver for a relative.

  • Ask them to talk about what the experience was like for them.
  • Use section VII (Anticipatory Grief and The Tasks and Competing Agendas Facing Families during End-of-Life) and go over each one asking your relative about how they managed the ‘balancing act’ of each of the tasks or competing agendas.

2.At the next class meeting, review the content by going down the list and asking students to share what they learned from their interview in regard to that topic.

Activity 5: Classroom discussion

Involve students as panelists OR by arranging for panelists from your professional or social network.

1.To choose a panel, ask students how many of them have had situations in their families where they or their family members were actively involved in caring for an ill relative until they died. From those who have had experience, ask for volunteers and select five students who would be willing to talk about their stories with their classmates.

2.With the panelists sitting in the front of the room, ask each one to briefly tell about their experience.

3.Ask all the students to write two questions for the panel on index cards and pass them to the instructor.

4.During a questions and answer period, the instructor could alternate questions from the cards with questions from the audience.

5.At the end of the session, ask each panelist to summarize what they viewed as the benefits for them individually (not the patient) and the personal costs (not just money) of being a family caregiver to a terminally ill family member.

Activity 6:Class Wrap-up Exercise

The purpose of this exercise is to help students synthesize and apply the theoretical information in the lecture.

  1. Ask your students to read the each of the following questions, then together as a class, generate answers to the questions that they would give if they were the to be the nurse caring for this family. The questions are in a separate document “activity6 questions.doc" saved with this document.

If time is limited or there is a large number of students in the class,

Option 1: Break your students into groups and have each group answer one or more questions of their choice.

Option 2: Ask your students to do this assignment at home, on their own, writing the response one or more questions of their choice. Then have students bring their answers to class, read and compare different people’s answers and discuss the similarities and differences among the responses.

  1. Then read the response written by Susan Arlen, M.D. in her pamphlet Making The Most Of Borrowed Time (Bereavement Press, [n.d.]). The article is included in a file called “activity6 arlen.doc.” This activity will serve as a role model for a variety of options allowing students to see how to respond pragmatically to families’ questions.

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TNEEL-NE 2001 D.J. Wilkie & TNEEL Investigators Anticipatory Grief