Marjana Bernot

Marjana Bernot

 

 

 

Marjana Bernot

 

Institute of Oncology, Ljubljana

 

Slovenia

 

 

 

 

 

Grief and bereavement in Slovenia

 

Background

Bereavement support is a very important part of palliative care if you want to implement a holistic approach. The reality is that in Slovenia, the bereavement support is often overlooked and grief is often ignored by the professionals. At the moment, we don’t have any official national bereavement strategies. Currently most people are supported in their grief by family, friends and community, some of them might look for more advanced support by themselves, but there is a lack of knowledge and no guidelines how to predict “difficult bereavement process” and where / to what program to direct them. Today we are aware, that people in the process of bereavement need different types of support. Only small percentages of people require specialist intervention during their bereavement period, still in Slovenian several are unrecognized.

 

Aim

Find a Diagnostic tool for recognizing a complicated bereavement, identifying the people who require specialist bereavement interventions and available information for support are the resources toolkit for creation of the Bereavement Care Recommendations that could promote better support to patients and their families and caregivers.

 

Methods / process

First, we made a research (1) and got the answer on: “Is the bereavement recognized or overlooked by the professions in Slovenia?”

The second step was the literature review to find out a diagnostic tool for recognizing a complicated bereavement. We would like to check if we could adapted it to use it as the part of Slovenian national Bereavement Recommendations. With the focus group, we are planning to check it how we could use it.

We have to identifying (research 2) which services or organisations are offering bereavement program in Slovenia.

 

Intended outputs / impact

A Diagnostic tool for recognizing a complicated bereavement, introduced and published as a part of Slovenian national Bereavement Recommendations is the most important output that we would like to have by the end of EUPCA program.