As a health care professional, you are likely to experience many losses in your professional life in addition to those everyone experiences in their personal lives:

• The death of a patient may feel like a personal loss because of the bonding that occurred with patient and family.¹
• Loss of professional expectations, self-image, and identity can occur when patient outcomes are less than expected or desired.¹
• Loss of one’s own assumptions or beliefs about life can follow unexpected patient deaths or the death of a young patient.¹
• Losses may remind you of your own mortality.²
• Grief can intensify the stresses intrinsic in complex medical organizations.¹

These losses can be disenfranchised.  Disenfranchised grief—hidden sorrow—is grief experienced when a loss is not or cannot be openly acknowledged, publicly mourned, or socially supported.³  It may be helpful to pause and read Vallurupalli’s and Wu's brief, insightful narratives of disenfranchised grief in a hospital ICU and clinic—experiences that likely occur frequently in medical professions.

“Mourning on Morning Rounds” describes a poignant example of disenfranchised grief for two ICU clinicians.⁴

“Virtual Grief” acknowledges a clinician's disenfranchised grief upon learning of the unexpected death of a healthy young person in a clinic chart note.⁵

Disenfranchised grievers may not recognize that their own symptoms are related to grief.  An important step is to identify and acknowledge the importance and meaning of a lost relationship (or non-death loss).  Grief specialist Doka notes,