Reflection Room in Thunder Bay hospital offers ‘safe space’ to share feelings about death
Staff, visitors invited to read comments, post what’s ‘in their heart’ about patient or loved one’s death
Organizers of the Reflection Room at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Thunder Bay, Ont., would like to see a month-long pilot project, which encouraged staff and visitors to contemplate and share their thoughts on the end of life, become a permanent installation.
The goal of the dedicated space is to give people “the opportunity to reflect on death and dying and the loss of loved ones” and then to write down those thoughts and leave them behind for others to read, said Jill Marcella, the manager of the North West Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) regional palliative care program.
The display was set up in a recently renovated area of the hospital, close to its busy main entrance. The natural wood on the walls, the soft lighting and the framed comments from previous exhibits all created a comforting “safe space” for people to “sit in quietness and think,” she said.
There were approximately 20 reflections posted in the Thunder Bay room, said Paul Holyoke, the director of research at SE Health in Toronto, a not-for-profit home care group overseeing the Reflection Room project.
Even just one comment would be considered a success, said Holyoke, who has overseen 33 Reflection Room installations.
“Some left stories, and some read stories, and took those stories in their hearts and in their minds, and probably, if our experience is true from other places, have relayed those stories elsewhere and started conversations that otherwise would not have happened” he said.
Many people expressed their gratitude for the experience, said Marcella, with staff in particular finding it a beneficial place to visit.
“Working in hospice, or in a hospital where death is often a common experience and there aren’t a lot of supports in place for staff once they’ve had a patient that’s died, and I think this type of a Reflection Room is one way of being able to have staff acknowledge that they’ve been impacted by the death of a patient and to be able to reflect on that and I think it’s a healthy part of the grieving process,” she said.
Research shows that acknowledging the grief health care workers feel when a patient dies is important when it comes to issues of mental health and burnout.
A Reflection Room also gives them the permission to mourn the much more personal and intimate deaths in their lives, said Holyoke.
“Health care providers deal with other people’s deaths all the time, and they have deaths in their own family and friends circles and so they have a sort of double grieving opportunity or burden,” he said.
Creating a permanent reflection space in a hospital would be another step toward “trying to normalize the experience of death and dying,” said Marcella.
The rooms, with their candles, cards and comments, open the door for people to ask “why am I reacting this way,” to a death, and ultimately allows people to “address the dead directly and remembering precise moments that bring back good memories, regret and gratitude for lives,” said Holyoke.
He and Marcella are working on a proposal to have the Reflection Room visit other communities across northwestern Ontario.
Holyoke is taking the concept to Calgary in January 2019, followed by Winnipeg in March 2019.
You can hear the full interview on the CBC program Up North here.