Death in the hospital: Breaking the bad news to the bereaved family

Abstract

Informing the family members about the sudden death of their loved one is a highly stressful experience for the treating doctors. Breaking the bad news to the bereaved family needs special skill on the part of the clinicians. An elaborate, step-wise modified action plan for breaking the sad news and grief reduction based on the literature has been presented here. The guidelines mentioned in the article are simply the tips to the clinicians and not to be considered as any form of protocols. Inclusion of this subject into the undergraduate medical curriculum has to be considered. By doing so, we can look forward to produce junior doctors who are better at coping with this awkward but extremely important aspect of clinical medicine.