Professional Complicated Grief Related to Terminal Care among Intensive Care Unit Nurses: An Evolutionary Concept Analysis

Le résumé fourni par la source

Purpose: This study aimed to analyze professional grief and related concepts in terminal care among intensive care unit nurses and propose a tentative conceptualization of professional complicated grief. Methods: Rodgers' evolutionary concept analysis was applied. International and Korean databases were searched for studies published from January 1995 to January 2026. Twenty-two studies were included and classified as core intensive care unit evidence, related critical care evidence, or broader contextual evidence. Results: Professional grief, nurses’ grief, and occupational grief were identified as overlapping terms, whereas professional bereavement, complicated grief, prolonged grief disorder, and pandemic grief were related concepts. Antecedents included repeated patient deaths, terminal and after-death care, caring relationships, insufficient organizational support, and professional role expectations. Five attributes were identified: persistence and reactivation, cumulativeness, multidimensional complexity, grounding in professional caring relationships, and restricted emotional expression and disenfranchisement. Consequences included psychological distress, burnout, adverse work-related outcomes, avoidance or emotional distancing, meaning reconstruction and professional growth, and organizational recognition and support needs. Here, complicated denotes the interwoven temporal, cumulative, multidimensional, relational, and organizational characteristics of grief rather than psychiatric severity or functional impairment. Conclusion: Professional complicated grief is a tentative nursing concept requiring qualitative validation and expert review before measurement and intervention development.

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.