NHS Education for Scotland’s (NES) Supporting Scottish Grief & Bereavement Care (SSG&BC) workstream focusses on supporting the delivery of safe, effective and person-centred care which is provided around the time of death and in bereavement, within a culture of support for staff health and wellbeing. A range of educational resources have been developed to enhance the preparedness of health and social care staff to manage care and communication in a bereavement context. Please note, these materials are not designed to be used by patients, relatives or carers.

The resources can be found on NES’ Support around Death (SAD) website www.sad.scot.nhs.uk, and also many of them are available on Turas Learn. A number of the materials are film or animation based, and these can be viewed on the SAD website's videowall.

A broad range of topics have been addressed within the bereavement resources developed to date, including e.g. 

• Discussing dying and anticipatory grief
• How to talk and be with adults who are bereaved and how to talk to children who are bereaved
• Supporting LGBT people around death and bereavement
• Delivering the news of a death by telephone
• Medical Certification of Cause of Death
• Coping with death and bereavement as a health and social care professional
• Bereavement in the workplace

The SAD website also provides information on future learning events for health and social care staff, hosted by NES’ SSG&BC workstream, as well as recordings from previous conference and webinar sessions.

Upcoming events include the annual NES Bereavement Education Conference, ‘Exploring bereavement from a new perspective’, a free, virtual event on Thursday 24^th November 2022 - #NESBereavement2022. Speakers will include the author Michael Rosen and workshop sessions will focus on an exploration of grief and loss across the life course and the diversity of experiences within a variety of settings and cultural groups e.g. bereavement experiences of Gypsies and Travellers, those in custody and people who are homeless. To view the programme or for details about poster abstract submission and registration please visit the NES Events website.

Did you know that NES Bereavement has a Twitter account? Follow us @NES_Bereavement if you are interested to be kept informed about the activities of the SSG&BC workstream or sign up to receive our quarterly e-Newsletter.

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