What Hospitals Can Do to Improve Bereavement Care

There’s a moment in every end-of-life situation that healthcare professionals know well.

The moment when there is nothing more to do medically — and a family is still sitting there, looking to you for something. Anything.

Most of the time, all you can offer is presence. And presence is powerful. But it’s not always enough.

Bereavement care in American hospitals has come a long way. But for many families — especially in under-resourced settings — what’s available is still mostly paper. A pamphlet. A brochure. A list of phone numbers.

Families in crisis don’t need phone numbers. They need something to hold.

The gap in bereavement care.

Grief support at hospitals most often begins after a patient has died — with follow-up calls, referrals to counselors, or mailed resources. These are valuable. But they miss the moment that matters most: the transition itself.

Anticipatory grief — the grief that begins before a death, during a terminal diagnosis or end-of-life care — is one of the least-addressed experiences in healthcare settings. Families often describe this period as the loneliest of their lives. They are still in the hospital. The medical team is appropriately focused on the patient. And the family waits.

What can a nurse, a social worker, or a bereavement coordinator offer in that window?

Practical steps hospitals and care teams can take:

1. Introduce tactile comfort items.
   Sensory, physical objects — things families can hold, touch, and take home — provide a level of comfort that no pamphlet can match. Heartbeat recording animals, memory boxes, and comfort kits are all examples. These items cost very little and carry enormous emotional weight.
2. Train staff on anticipatory grief language.
   Simple language shifts make a significant difference. Validating statements such as “What you’re feeling right now is completely normal” or “There’s no right way to do this” can reduce the sense of isolation families feel. Avoid common phrases like “they’re in a better place” or “at least they aren’t suffering” — even with the best intentions, these minimize a family’s pain.
3. Include children directly.
   Children are often the forgotten grievers in hospital settings. They are kept in waiting rooms, shielded from what’s happening, and handed nothing. Including them — with age-appropriate language, a comfort object, and direct acknowledgment — reduces long-term trauma and helps families process loss together.
4. Partner with community nonprofits.
   Hospital bereavement budgets are typically limited. Community partnerships can fill the gap at no cost to the institution. Kyle’s Kritters, for example, provides free heartbeat animals directly to partner hospitals — no billing, no application, no administrative burden. The bears arrive. The nurses hand them out. Families go home with something real.
5. Follow up — and mean it.
   A phone call 2–4 weeks after a loss can be one of the most impactful actions a care team can take. Not to check a box — but to ask: “How are you doing? Do you have what you need?” Most families will say it meant the world that someone called.

A note from Kyle’s Kritters.

We work with bereavement coordinators and nursing staff at Piedmont Augusta and the Medical College of Georgia. We’ve seen firsthand how much it matters when a hospital has something tangible to offer a family.

If you work in healthcare and your hospital doesn’t have a Heartbeat Bear program, we’d love to talk. There’s no cost, no paperwork burden, and no waiting list. We’ll bring the bears. You hand them to families.

That’s the whole partnership.

Contact us to bring Kyle’s Kritters to your hospital

Resources for healthcare professionals:

Center to Advance Palliative Care
National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization
The Compassionate Friends