Vicarious Posttraumatic Growth in End-of-Life Care: How Filling Gaps in Knowledge Can Foster Clinicians’ Growth

Abstract

Vicarious posttraumatic growth is a term used to describe the positive benefits from working with trauma patients who themselves have experienced a highly stressful or traumatic event and resultant growth. Research on vicarious posttraumatic growth remains in its initial stages and findings are inconsistent, leading to the need for additional research. A literature review was performed to ascertain the methodologies guiding research on vicarious posttraumatic growth and identify gaps in knowledge. This study found that 71% of research studies examined used survey instruments to measure vicarious posttraumatic growth and 87% of these studies utilized the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (α = 0.90). This instrument was not designed to measure secondary trauma. In order to support clinicians who are at high risk of adverse outcomes, the knowledge of vicarious posttraumatic growth must be broadened by conducting research with varying methodologies, among other populations, and by developing effective survey instruments to operationalize this concept.

Keywords:

• Grief
• loss
• growth
• secondary trauma
• vicarious

Additional information

Funding

This research was performed independently with no funding.