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Show Death, Dying Subject Of Nurse's Lecture "A culture that focuses on youth, life and health such ts the United States often has difficulty dealing with the stage of life called death." So says Luana Hood, R.N. who lectured Thursday evening on death and dying to members of the hospital nursing staff at Garfield Memorial Hospital. The guest lecturer who Just returned from a trip to China, spoke to nurses and health care workers who received continuing education credit of 2.2 hours for the class. Hood has been a nurse in the oncology ward (cancer ward) at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City for the past 10 years. She said that most people are afraid to say "die" or "death" and use "pass away" or "passes on" instead. She said such usage reflects a society's feelings about death as being something unreal and says that people not only cannot face the reality of death but cannot use even the proper terminology in referring to it. She discussed the normalcy of grief and said that everyone passes through a "grieving process" after the death of a loved one, or, as often happens with nurses, someone to whom they have grown especially close. She named five stages of grief as xitlined in Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's wok. "Death the Final Stage of Srowth:" (1) denial, (2) anger, (3) argalning, (4) depression and (5) icceptance. She explaiend that each person las his own coping mechanism and lis own time frame in which to work hrough these various processes or tages. She noted that there are many eactions to death and the grieving irocess as there are individuals in he world and no one is to say which ray is right or how long each stage f the process ought to be. |