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Web site helps cancer victims' families after loss

Respiratory Care Weekly, April 5, 2006

A new University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center Web resource sheds light on the grief process that families of cancer patients endure after a loved one dies. Too often after a patient dies surviving family members find themselves cut off from support they found in the medical community while the patient was living, the university's grief and loss program director says. While Michigan's program offers one-on-one contact with patient families, it also offers other health professionals tip sheets for patients and caregivers about the differences between healthy and unhealthily grief behaviors.

"Families have told us that they feel abandoned, that there's not anyone that follows up or calls them," says Susan Wintermeyer-Pingel, grief and loss program coordinator at the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center. "When a family member dies, the family has to continue to go on. By pulling in the whole family and following up with them, it lets them know that they do matter and that they are all a part of who we treat."

Click here http://www.cancer.med.umich.edu/clinic/coping.htm to access the Web resource.

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