Glendale Adventist Medical Center – Beyond Loss

Glendale, CA
April 2017

Overview
Glendale Adventist Medical Center’s Beyond Loss bereavement program serves anyone experiencing bereavement, anticipatory bereavement, and/or complicated grief or traumatic grief. This program has organized a collective group of professionals, agencies, community partners, and the Consortium of Bereavement Professionals to support a healthy network of referrals so the greater population has access to the most up-to-date bereavement support programs available close to their geographic area. The program also has kept the cost of participating very affordable regardless of ability to pay.

Beyond Loss has a deep understanding of the body of knowledge and research that identifies a direct relationship between stress and grief. That understanding informs their educational training program for professionals, volunteers, and specialists, which in turn broadens the level of support made available to the general public. The program publishes a bi-monthly newsletter available to all participants. This publication reinforces a sense of community and reaches more than 500 former and current participants, hospital patients and their families, and guests of the hospital. Readers also include the chaplains throughout the Adventist Health community of more than 20 hospitals and clinics on the west coast. Annual healing events deepen the sense of community as members of the program and members of the community come together to honor those who have died and those they wish to pay tribute to. The program currently offers six specific weekly grief support meetings, two of which honor any adult loss and four that are specific to survivors of suicide, adolescents and teens, and spousal/significant other loss.

The cornerstone of the Beyond Loss program remains its educational trainings specific to grief, complicated grief, traumatic grief, ambiguous loss and resolution of grief. A newer component to the educational program is demonstrating how the body can release stress and return to rest through “therapeutic” yoga to place the body in a neutral and restful position in preparation for deep relaxation and deep breathing exercises, resulting in healing from stressors related to grief and negative life events.

Impact
Over the last 27 years, thousands of students have taken the two-day certified bereavement facilitator training, and most continue to offer support programs, individual grief counseling and educational opportunities throughout California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Nevada, Texas and Louisiana. Beyond Loss has developed a growing community of thousands of well-trained and supervised volunteer group facilitators, both licensed professionals and paraprofessionals, that greatly enhance the availability of support for the bereaved.

Lessons Learned

• There is an important value in placing a bereavement program in a hospital setting. The hospital provides a safe, secure place for grieving people to become vulnerable enough to address their issues. Grieving is a mind and body experience that affects physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional health. Safely addressing painful and unpredictable emotions is supported by a broad safety net of available services in a hospital setting. Emergency medical care teams and behavioral medicine for different levels of need are on hand.
• Training is the full responsibility of the best supervisor you can hire. The supervisor is responsive to anything that happens in a support group or to a volunteer. Volunteer facilitators communicate their challenges and, with their supervisor, they develop a way for the volunteer to manage a difficult group member with compassion, caring, and for the higher good of that person. Ultimately, facilitation must hold the integrity of the whole group – everyone in the room. A volunteer should never feel alone or unsupported.
• Providing support to families who have survived a suicide is of utmost importance. Two survivor groups meet each week to support these families during this traumatic loss.
• Reaching deeply into the community to provide support and recognition of the losses members are experiencing ultimately creates more harmony within the community. The Annual Gathering of Remembrance in December allows community members to find solace with others who are experiencing grief during the holidays.

Future Goals
In 2017 and 2018, Beyond Loss continues a strategic plan to reach out into the community to heighten awareness of grief support for the adolescent and teen population, and to provide educational trainings and support for other agencies to develop programs that reach this vulnerable group.

Contact: Rev. Alice Parsons Zulli, IT, BCPC, Chaplain
Director, Bereavement Support and Services
Telephone: 818-409-8008
Email: alice.zulli@ah.org