Research Proposal on Grief INTRODUCTION Although effects are extended in controlling the progress of a disease and restoring the well-being of patients, there are diseases which pass beyond the stage of being curable. Death is a natural occurrence in the health care setting and since nurses play a vital role in providing direct patient care, a patient’s death may bring a sense of loss and grief which could eventually affect the way health care services are appropriately and adequately provided to other patients. However, the degree of nurses’ grief as a reaction to patient death may vary in intensity. This variation may be influenced by several factors present in both the nurse and the nurse-patient relationship. This research study investigates the degree of correlation between these variables and the level of nurses’ grief, it will also look into the factors that may affect the level of grief that nurses experience upon the death of their patient.

PROBLEM STATEMENT Grief is an inevitable phenomenon that every human being will eventually experience Cowles and Rodgers (1991). Base of the fact that nurses are in close contact with dying patients, they are vulnerable to the experience of grief. However, the emotional aspect of nurses’ responses to the death of their patients has barely been explored. It is opinionated that the nurse’s own emotional needs are unaddressed due to the fact that most of the studies related to patient’s death focus on the patient’s relatives and significant others. Other researches explore the nurse’s role as one who offers emotional support to the grieving family. Despite the fact that the nursing profession demands that nurses maintain a certain degree of emotional detachment from their patients, nurses may still feel that the death of their patient is their personal loss. Due to the demands of the profession, nurses may have to