Grief on the Agenda of Multiprofessional Oncology and Palliative Care Teams: a Family Assistance Program at the Federal University of São Paulo

Abstract

Over recent years attention has been paid to the need to broaden the concept of palliative care and to include the grief reactions of patients’ family members as a focus of multiprofessional teams. In hospitals, grief affects not just the patient who receives the news of a reserved prognosis, but also the patient’s family and the technical teams who come into contact with the patient. Due to its potential to become complicated and cause physical, psychological and community problems, grief has already been identified as a public health problem, capable of silently placing a burden on care networks. This article aims to locate the problem of grief in hospital palliative care and oncology teams and give an overview of a group assistance program for grieving family members which has contributed to an improvement in the quality of communication and the dissemination of information in a teaching hospital in São Paulo.