Table 1.

Key recommendations of the 1998 ICS bereavement care guidelines.

1. All intensive care staff should have access to training in bereavement care and in communication skills training.

2. Staff support programmes should be instituted to allow staff to understand their own responses to loss, hence allowing them to deliver bereavement care more effectively.

3. Information must be available to staff about cultural and religious rites around the time of death. Moreover, information should be accessible to staff about local services and groups that are able to help bereaved families.

4. Practical information regarding what to do after a death & help available must be readily accessible to family members.

5. Efforts must be made to ensure the privacy of grieving relatives and comfortable facilities should be provided for them.

6. The patient’s General Practitioner must be informed of the death. Consideration should be given to informing the general practitioner of family members.

7. Facilities should be available to follow-up bereaved relatives.

8. Each ICU must have a written bereavement policy with provision for audit and continuing quality review.

9. A named member of staff should be responsible for training ICU staff in bereavement care, for writing, auditing and developing the bereavement care policy, for the availability of information and for liaising with local groups offering related services.