Dysfunctional grieving related to childbearing loss: A descriptive study

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Abstract
The purpose of this qualitative study was to analyze client cases with the nursing diagnosis of dysfunctional grieving. Such research is in congruence with the American Nurses’ Association's definition of nursing as cited in Nursing: A Social Policy Statement and the call for diagnostic and case study research from the National Group for Classification of Nursing Diagnoses. A Grounded Theory, case study methodology was used to discover, categorize, and evaluate defining characteristics and strategies of assessment and counseling for the diagnosis. These cases include spontaneous abortion, stillbirth, infant death, and birth of severely handicapped and premature infants. Findings led to the development of a nursing counseling model, which highlights a creative nursing process of assessment and intervention that has not been identified in the literature. The assessment strategies of this model include the grief behavior paradox, mental imagery, and the diminutive therapeutic effect. Counseling strategies include dream baby identification, communication mapping, therapeutic use of humor, cultural and behavioral sensitivity, emotional time out, building self‐esteem, nurse authenticity, and self‐help groups. These findings describe advanced nursing practice that supports the position that nurses diagnose and treat “human responses to actual or potential health problems.”;

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