In this chapter, we address the relationship between loss and grief that renal
nurses experience and stress management. Renal nurses provide care across the life span
and health continuum, including acute and chronic care to patients with kidney disease.
They are involved in health promotion, illness prevention, the management of acute,
chronic and terminally ill care and rehabilitation. The nurses also have to deal with
sudden or unexpected death. The degree of nurses’ grief as a reaction to patient death
may vary in intensity. This variation may be influenced by several factors present
within the nurse him/herself and the nurse–patient relationship. Due to the demands of
their profession, nurses may have to suppress their grief to respond to duty’s call. This
prevents them from undergoing the normal grieving process, which results to a range of
consequences from burnout to potentially harmful addictions. Nurse educators have
identified that historically nurses have not been prepared to care for dying patients. This
lack of education has been reflected in the level and quality of terminally ill care
provided to patients’.
Keywords: Stress, death, loss, grief, management, nursing, haemodialysis, Renal
nurses, staff, end of life, caring, peritoneal nurses, terminally ill patients,
professionals, post graduate students, researchers, academicians.
