LeeAnne Douglas (University of Toronto); Sheldon Cheskes (Sunnybrook-Osler Centre for Prehospital Care); Michael Feldman (Sunnybrook-Osler Centre for Prehospital Care); Savithiri Ratnapalan (University of Toronto)

Synopsis

Communicating a death notification is stressful for Emergency Medical Service (EMS) providers. This review will describe EMS providers’ attitudes toward communicating death notifications and the impact on the bereaved. The literature on death notification education for EMS providers and the requirements for such offerings will be reviewed.

Recommendations for communicating death notifications in the field will be provided

Abstract

Communicating a death notification is stressful for Emergency Medical Service (EMS) providers. This review will describe EMS providers’ attitudes toward communicating death notifications and the impact on the bereaved. The literature on death notification education for EMS providers and the requirements for such offerings will be reviewed. A literature search was conducted on July 19, 2011 using Ovid MEDLINE (R) (1948 to July week 1 2011), Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) (1982 to present), and Excerpta Medical Database (EMBASE) (1980 to week 33 2010) databases using the key words: “emergency medical technician,” “emergency medical services,” “death,” “attitude to death,” “bereavement,” “grief,” “dying,” “training,” and “continuing education.” Two-hundred and fifty-eight English articles were retrieved. Articles from trade journals were excluded. Thirteen articles that described EMS providers’ attitudes towards death notification or a death education program were analyzed. Many EMS providers feel uncomfortable communicating death notifications. No uniform training exists for EMS providers in communicating death notifications. Death education programs range from asynchronous online courses to two-day interactive workshops. In order to mitigate the stress on providers and the bereaved, death notification education should be interactive, culturally relevant, and delivered by a cadre of trained, multidisciplinary instructors. Rigorous qualitative research using rural and urban EMS providers is required. This will ensure development of a curriculum that reflects the unique challenges of communicating death notifications in the field. Recommendations for the format of death education and guidelines for communicating a death notification in the field will be provided.

Funding Sources

Special thanks to the Ontario Paramedic Research Consortium for providing funding for this research.

Declaration

There are no conflicts of interest to declare