Grave Words: Notifying Survivors about Sudden, Unexpected Deaths

by Kenneth V. Iserson MD

Overview

LONG DESCRIPTION:
How to notify survivors about sudden deaths. Healthcare, law enforcement, fire service, religious and military personnel must often take on that task with little or no formal training. Grave Words makes this less stressful by providing detailed protocols for nearly every death-notification situation. It gives examples and tips about when, why, and how to use these protocols. Learn:
• How to make telephone notifications.
• When to use the “D” words: death, died, and dead.
• How to tell children, parents, and disaster survivors about deaths.
• Typical questions survivors ask, and some answers.
• Various religions’ death rites and attitudes toward death.
• How to identify grief reactions.
• When survivors should view the body.
• How and when to follow up with survivors.
• How to deal with the media after a death.
• How to effectively teach death notification skills.
• Phrases to use when talking with survivors, and those “unhelpful” phrases to avoid.
• Bereavement resources
• Support group information
• A death-notification course outline
Specific protocols for emergency and obstetric departments, critical care and trauma units, prehospital care (EMS), police, chaplains and social workers, military, schools, prisons, and after disasters.
As one reviewer wrote, “This book made the ‘light go on.’” Another wrote, “What a terrific resource! Practical, forthright, and sensitive. A critical resource.”

Product Details

BN ID:	2940013482326
Publisher:	Galen Press, Ltd.
Publication date:	12/04/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	350
File size:	496 KB

About the Author

KENNETH V. ISERSON, M.D., MBA

Throughout his career, Kenneth V. Iserson, M.D., MBA, FACEP, FAAEM, FIFEM, has had to notify survivors about a loved one’s sudden death. Working in both prehospital and hospital-based Emergency Medicine for many decades, he is a Professor Emeritus of Emergency Medicine at The University of Arizona, Medical Director (Emeritus) of the Southern Arizona Rescue Association (search & rescue), a Supervisory Physician with Arizona’s Disaster Medical Assistance Team (AZ-1), and a member of the American Red Cross disaster response team.
The author of hundreds of scientific articles on Emergency Medicine and biomedical ethics, he has also authored numerous books, including Grave Words: Notifying Survivors about Sudden, Unexpected Deaths and Death to Dust: What Happens to Dead Bodies? (both by Galen Press, Ltd., Tucson, AZ: www.galenpress.com).
Dr. Iserson now limits his medical practice to global and disaster medicine. In the past few years, he has practiced or taught on all seven continents, including six months as Lead Physician for the U.S. Antarctic Program and has worked with NGOs in rural areas of Central and South America, Zambia, Bhutan, and Ghana. He also runs the REEME Project website (www.REEME.arizona.edu), which freely distributes more than 700 Spanish-language PowerPoint presentations on Emergency Medicine.