Helping healthcare professionals
The Grief-Sensitive Healthcare Project
The Grief-Sensitive Healthcare Project (GSHP) is a multimodal learning initiative designed to increase grief literacy within the U.S. healthcare system. Developed by the Yale Child Study Center in partnership with the New York Life Foundation and Child Bereavement UK, the GSHP provides free educational resources to help healthcare professionals respond to grief with greater understanding, compassion, and confidence.
The Need
Grief is an inherent part of healthcare, but many healthcare professionals are expected to navigate loss with limited education, language, or support.
“I felt woefully unprepared in terms of what I could say to them to make anything better. I felt terrible. I felt absolutely terrible.”
A Systemic Gap in Grief Education
Many healthcare professionals receive limited education related to grief, emotional processing, and communication around loss.
Existing grief education opportunities are often limited, elective, or inconsistently offered, with relatively few structured opportunities for ongoing support. Outdated frameworks, such as stage-based models, remain widely used in healthcare education and practice, even though they lack strong empirical support and can misrepresent how grief is actually experienced.
Medical education has historically emphasized emotional distancing and detachment, which can leave healthcare professionals underprepared for the emotional realities of grief-sensitive care.
Healthcare professionals have reported wanting more structured support related to grief, self-care, emotional coping, and communication in healthcare settings.
Addressing the Gap
When healthcare professionals acknowledge grief and respond with attuned, compassionate communication, it can strengthen trust and contribute to more person-centered care.
Education in grief-sensitive communication, emotional coping, and personal wellness strategies can help healthcare professionals navigate emotionally demanding roles and support long-term well-being and workforce sustainability.
The GSHP was created to help address these gaps by equipping healthcare professionals with contemporary, evidence-informed approaches for responding to grief in ways that better support patients and care partners.
The content on this site is provided for educational and informational purposes only. References to specific resources, organizations, services, or approaches do not constitute endorsement or recommendation by the GSHP. This information is not intended to replace professional medical, mental health, or therapeutic advice, diagnosis, or treatment.