Every physician will ultimately experience adverse patient outcomes including loss, which can lead to physician grief and burnout. There are limited resources for physician mental health support and grief education. We have attempted to address this issue by implementing a grief support group that aims to address the emotional and psychological needs of medical residents. The objective of this study is to assess the effect of grief support groups on medical residents' abilities to cope with personal grief and loss.

A grief support program was created by mental health professionals at Calm Waters, a local organization that provides grief counseling to the OKC community. The program was structured into eight weekly group sessions which were dedicated to a specific topic related to grief and the processing of emotions associated with the accelerated rate of loss inherent in the healthcare field. Each session was attended by a group of eight residents who were voluntary participants. A pre-survey was administered prior to the first session, which included calculation of Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) scores for each participant. At the end of the eight group sessions, a post-survey was administered to evaluate the group session contents.

Data collection ongoing