Accommodating Bereaved Parents in the Workplace: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Helpful workplace support strategies and accommodations (WSSA) for bereaved parents returning to work was assessed via comprehensive search of databases from 1990 to January 21, 2022. Eleven of 45 qualitative articles met inclusion. Bereaved parents often felt returning to work provided a coping strategy for and/or distraction from grief; however, some received insensitive comments by employer/coworkers. Helpful WSSA included flexibility on date to return to work and schedule. In conclusion, due to the intensity of their grief, bereaved parents benefit from a workplace offering individualized time off for bereavement and workplace accommodations to address potential difficulty meeting prior productivity demands.

Keywords:

• Workplace support
• workplace accommodations
• bereavement
• child death
• parent

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Drs. Karthik Ghosh, Ulrich Specks, Sean Caples; Erin Pagel, Eric Cleveland, Kari Mc Gowan, and Teri Shones.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Due to the nature of the research, the data is present in Table 1.

Additional information

Funding

Hemang Yadav, MBBS, received funding support from Grant Number K23HL151671 from the National Institute of Health.

Notes on contributors

Kimberly L. Schoonover

Kimberly L. Schoonover is from Minnesota and works as a general internist at Mayo Clinic. Dr. Schoonover graduated from the University of Minnesota Medical School before completing an internal medicine residency at Mayo Clinic in 2011. She has since completed a fellowship in Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Her research interests are primarily focused on palliative care medicine, specifically on support strategies for grief.

Hemang Yadav

Hemang Yadav grew up in Scotland and obtained his medical degree from the University of Cambridge and University of Imperial in England. After working in the National Health Service, he moved to the United States in 2009 where he did postdoctoral research work at Johns Hopkins University in ARDS mechanisms. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine and fellowship in Pulmonary/Critical Care Medicine at Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN) where he is currently a consultant in Pulmonary and Intensive Care Medicine.

Larry Prokop

Larry Prokop is an academic librarian with Mayo Clinic Libraries who has extensive experience in developing and refining literature searches for the purposes of systematic reviews, scoping reviews and meta-analyses.

Maria I. Lapid

Maria I. Lapid is a Professor of Psychiatry whose clinical practice includes inpatient care of elderly patients with highly complex psychiatric, neurologic, medical and psychosocial issues, including end-of-life considerations. She is the founding program director of the Geriatric Psychiatry Fellowship in Mayo School of Graduate Medical Education. She has board certifications in psychiatry, geriatric psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine, and board eligibility in hospice and palliative medicine. She completed her medical school in the University of the East Ramon Magsaysay Memorial Medical Center in the Philippines before doing her Psychiatry residency at Mayo Clinic.