Sage Palliative Medicine & Chronic Care

This episode features Dr Lucy Selman  (Palliative and End of Life Care Research Group, Population Health Sciences, Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK). During COVID-19, infection control measures have prevented many family members from being with seriously ill or dying loved ones, and impacted on after-death mourning practices and bereavement. Clinicians and funeral officiants have tried to mitigate the impact of infection control measures, for example, using video-technology; however, this has not been done consistently and its acceptability is unknown. The news media play an important role in creating a sense-making narrative, reflecting and enforcing cultural ideas and shaping experiences of illness and bereavement. Online UK newspapers focused on how COVID-19 disrupted ‘saying goodbye’ (prior to death, at the moment of death and after death) and conflicted with cultural understandings of a ‘good death’ and ‘good grief’, despite efforts undertaken to mitigate the effects of restr