Extending our reach: telehealth delivered grief support groups for rural hospice

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this pilot project was to develop, implement, and evaluate a distance-technology delivered grief support group program for grieving persons in underserved rural/frontier communities in Utah. This project was a collaboration between an established university-based grief support program, the (blinded) Telehealth Network and with one primary nonprofit hospice (blinded) and two secondary nonprofit hospice agencies (blinded) serving underserved/rural-frontier communities. We evaluated program feasibility (recruitment, retention, acceptability, tolerability, clinician trainability, and stakeholder satisfaction) and participant grief outcomes. Distance delivered grief groups compared favorably to face-to-face groups and met an unmet need for bereaved hospice families.

KEYWORDS:

• Grief
• support groups
• hospice
• tele-health

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

University of Utah Institutional Review Board IRB_00102432. This project was funded by the Cambia Health Foundation (Supiano, PI). These findings have previously been reported at the Social Work Hospice and Palliative Network Annual Assembly 2019, and the Northwest Regional Telehealth Resource Center Annual Conference 2019.