A decision model for community nurses providing bereavement care

Community (district) nurses play a significant role in assisting and supporting bereaved informal carers (family members and friends) of recently deceased clients of palliative care. Bereavement care demands a wide range of competencies including clinical decision-making. To date, little has been known about the decision-making role of community nurses in Australia. The aim of this study was to conduct in-depth examination of an existing data set generated from semi-structured interviews of 10 community nurses providing follow-up bereavement care home visits within an area health service of a metropolitan region of Sydney, Australia. A grounded theory approach to data analysis generated a model, which highlights an interaction between ‘the relationship’, ‘the circumstances’ (surrounding the bereavement), ‘the psychosocial variant’, ‘the mix of nurses’, ‘the workload’, and ‘the support’ available for the bereaved and for community nurses, and elements of ‘the visit’ (central to bereavement care).