Grief Coach, a text-based grief support intervention: Acceptability among hospice family members (Journal Article)
Levesque, D., Lunardini, M., Payne, E., & Callison-Burch, V. (2023). Grief Coach, a text-based grief support intervention: Acceptability among hospice family members. Omega Journal of Death and Dying. https://doi.org/10.1177/00302228231159450U.S. Medicare-certified hospices must provide bereavement care to family members for 13 months following a patient’s death. This manuscript describes Grief Coach, a text message programme that delivers expert grief support and can assist hospices in meeting the bereavement care mandate. It also describes the first 350 Grief Coach subscribers from hospice and the results of a survey of active subscribers (n=154) to learn whether and how they found the programme helpful. The 13-month programme retention rate was 86%. Among survey respondents (n=100, response rate=65%), 73% rated the programme as very helpful, and 74% rated it as contributing to their sense of being supported in their grief. Grievers aged 65+ and males gave the highest ratings. Respondents’ comments identify key intervention content that they found helpful. These findings suggest that Grief Coach may be a promising component of hospice grief support programmeming to meet the needs of grieving family members.