Table 6.

Responses from Participants

Theme	Subthemes	Quotes
“Sense of…purpose”	For child's life and death	“One of the things I really wanted to emphasize is that I wanted her life to mean something, I didn't want to go, I didn't want it to be quickly forgotten nor did I want it to be wasted, didn't think her life, per say, was wasted, but I didn't want to just have this child…forgot about.” –Parent
	Helping others	“If I could help, you know, somebody else, you know, what they're going to go through later or you know a physician or a nurse or any other health care provider, you know, with a patient or a family if I could help in any way that would be a make a little more sense to what happened…and you kind of keep, you know, to keep his memory alive.” –Parent
	Paying back	“…and I thought about what [hospital] had meant to our family and the care that Michael received and so I thought it could pay back a little bit.” –Parent
Benefits	Telling my child's story and feeling stronger	“I learned that I'm a lot stronger than I thought [laughing] because I would never have thought I would come back and talk about it; it would be something I didn't want to do. But in the process of coming back and talking about it and talking about it I've gotten a lot stronger and I can talk about it because now I'm past my, um, sadness to an extent.” –Parent
	“You still learn”…insights, increased sensitivity	“…has given me the knowledge that it's more than just you live, you die and that's it, it's about a process of healing…so I think I learned a lot.” –Staff
		“…class, it was kind of a softer side of death. You know it's more of, um, I guess when you go to church and you learned about religion, you've learned about God or whatever it teaches you go through the stages and what…didn't make it seem like it was, it was just doomsday, you know.” –Staff
		“I mean I've got that much out of the training that, you know, I couldn't understand that even though I grieved, they grieved too.” –Parent
		“People are who they are regardless of what walk of life they're in, everyone has feelings, everyone has their own way of dealing with things…it was more like after a child had passed, you know, some of them didn't want to go to the room or the memorial service or really go and visit a parent or they were afraid they would say the wrong thing. So it lets me know that they had feelings but they didn't know how to express them.” –Parent
	“See it from another side”	“I thought it was great. Um, you get to see it from another side not just as a worker, but also know what the families go through by having parents being present.” –Staff
		What would you say has been the most meaningful things you've walked away with? “I, gosh, probably the opportunity to participate with a group of people from different disciplines and all talk together about something to get each other's perspective and feel like maybe, maybe health care professionals and I'm talking not only doctors and nurses, but social workers and…child life specialist and anyone who's in here can is going to look at things differently for having participated and listening to parents or grandparents talk about what it is from the family viewpoint.” –Parent
	“Makes it more real”	“You still learn and it's nice to hear the perspectives, I mean I really enjoyed hearing the physicians speak, like to see where they were coming from because there's, you know, it makes them real people too…to say I was uncomfortable talking about this or this was a hard conversation for me and I can see why that on the video blah, blah, blah. You know it was nice to, I love how it was so multidisciplinary–I think that was the best part of it and family aspect is really good even though it is a little intimidating at first.” Right, it wouldn't be the same without that piece obviously, you know. “No, because it makes it more real.” –Staff
Challenges	“The emotional factor” for parents	“I guess the biggest challenge was the emotional factor.” –Parent
		“There were some tearful moments along the way…then my heart went out to this grandmother because it brought out fresh memories for her and but this is a different setting and I didn't know how much to reach out and try and comfort her during that discussion or just let it go because she's part of the team instead of, I had to distinguish between her being part of the team which she was and she had made a lot of good contributions to the team instead of remembering her as a grandmother.” –Staff
	Staff discomfort with parents present	“and they were like, you could ask anything and you can express and view because we've been through this; they were far enough removed from the time that they had to deal with the whole situation in person that they were able to talk more freely about it and be more candid.” –Staff
	“Not so hard professional” in staff relationships with patients/families	“Yeah, I remember going back in my own care and how you know one of the things we talked about was, um, becoming emotionally detached because you know this person's going to die. And I remember going back and it was real hard time for me because I was treating someone with a brain tumor, and watching him die and it was so hard because I just wanted to emotionally detach and after that seminar I realized, you know, hearing that how harmful that is for the parent because they think you don't care. And so I think that was something they all were sort of expressing, you know, where is that fine line because I detach because I don't want to get hurt, but then I want the family to know I do deeply care.” –Parent who is also a health care professional with adults
		“Oh yeah, I mean it's impossible not to have an emotional attachment to patients that are dying.” –Staff
		“I will remember that little girl for the rest of my life and I'll remember what her body felt like under my hands for the rest of my life.” –Staff