CARE THAT LISTENS: SHAPING INTENSIVE CARE UNIT BEREAVEMENT PROTOCOLS THROUGH THE POWER OF STORY

Complicated Grief (CG) is an intense and prolonged grief reaction that can significantly affect individuals’ well-being. While bereavement is a natural human experience and specific to an individual’s worldview, CG requires targeted support to mitigate long-term adverse outcomes. Bereavement care is a recognized intervention to address CG, yet there is limited guidance on effective bereavement care protocols which foster equitable, diverse, decolonized, and inclusive supports within healthcare settings, particularly in Intensive Care Units (ICUs). In Saskatchewan, no standardized or routine bereavement care protocols currently exist in ICUs, despite the demonstrated need realized from an increased risk of developing CG in the ICU. This thesis project contributes to a larger research project entitled Healing Together: Understanding and engaging healthcare providers to expand bereavement support in the ICU (Healing Together), led by a team of researchers at the University of Saskatchewan (USask), which aims to develop ICU-specific bereavement care protocols that prioritize equity, diversity, decolonization, and inclusion (EDDI). While the larger project invites ICU practitioners to develop these protocols in a co-creative workshop, this thesis research focuses on a method for sharing diverse lived experiences of bereavement with workshop attendees using a storytelling method to prompt self-reflection of power, privilege, and bias. Equity-deserving co-researchers were engaged using a storytelling method to record the lived experience of bereavement and reflect on how their worldview shaped their journey of grief. The researcher shared the stories with ICU practitioners ahead of the co-creative workshops to encourage self-reflexivity among the listeners as they later engaged in the facilitated workshop discussions. The larger ICU study shared preliminary findings with the researcher for use and translation in a knowledge mobilization (KMb) activity, where the research knowledge was returned to the storytellers, and demonstrates the larger study’s priority to champion patients as research partners. Following the online KMb activity, the researcher facilitated a sharing circle with the co-researchers to explore three research questions that addressed: how storytelling supports the expression of worldview and grief experiences; whether storytellers perceive their knowledge had an impact on co-creative workshops and ICU practitioners; and finally, how the storytellers respond to the KMb activity. Using poetic transcription to create co-researcher-voiced poems from sharing circle discussions, findings suggest that storytellers perceived sharing their stories with healthcare practitioners an effective method for evoking empathy with the listeners. Nurtured through a trusting relationship among the researcher and co-researchers, storytelling empowers co-researchers through self-determination and contributes to the co-creation of bereavement care that is culturally safe, inclusive, and responsive to diverse needs. This work offers a meaningful contribution to improving end-of-life practices in ICUs and creates a space for equity-deserving voices in healthcare transformation.

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