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Seminar to share proper death-notification tips
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
CHAMPION
Notifying someone of the death of a family member is the most difficult task emergency-services personnel perform.
It is a necessary task, however, and a forthcoming seminar is designed to teach these personnel details concerning how to make death notifications with compassion and professionalism.
“The seminar will help prepare them to be in the role of the messenger,” said Tilde Bricker, victim-services specialist with Mothers Against Drunk Driving of Ohio. “The training is almost as essential as first aid. It needs to be more prevalent.”
MADD and Kent State University are presenting the session from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. May 12 at KSU’s Trumbull Campus Workforce Development and Continuing Studies Center, Room 211.
Continuing-education credit is being offered for counselors, social workers, funeral directors, police and emergency medical technicians.
The session also is intended for clergy and chaplains, nurses, crime victim advocates, coroner’s investigators, prosecutors and military personnel.
MADD began sponsoring such seminars in recent years after finding that some death notifications to families of crash victims were not being tactfully delivered, Bricker said. In a worst-case situation, police posted notes on the doors of residences asking the occupants to call the coroner’s office concerning a family member, she recalled.
When notifications are properly made, “Every attempt is made to notify a person in person,” said Atty. David C. Comstock Jr., fire chief of the Western Reserve Joint Fire District, which serves the village of Poland and Poland Township.
“You want to address the circumstances and the facts directly with that person in a straightforward and compassionate manner,” Comstock said. “There is nothing more stressful in somebody’s life than the death of a loved one.”
A notification should be timely made to enable families to begin their grieving process, said Mary G. Wilson, assistant professor of justice studies at KSU.
By not making himself or his staff available over a weekend to expedite confirmation of the identification of the deceased, Dr. David Kennedy, Mahoning County coroner, appears to have compounded the suffering of families of three people who died last month in a Campbell car crash, Wilson said.
Officer Paulo Morales of the Cypress, Calif., police department, a certified MADD death-notification instructor, is presenting the seminar.
The registration fee is $40, and the registration deadline is Wednesday. Call Bricker toll-free at (800) 552-8641 to register.
Make notifications face to face, not by telephone or in writing, because face-to-face contact properly conveys the level of seriousness and allows grieving people to ask questions and to express their feelings and have them validated.
Have another person with you when you make the notification so you are prepared in case a grieving person collapses, faints or becomes hysterical or even combative.
Preferably use a quiet room or small office with the door closed while making the notification to ensure privacy.
Gather as much information as possible about the situation before you make the notification so you can answer a grieving person’s likely questions, and be prepared to provide contact information for police, fire or coroner’s office personnel if necessary.
Do not use empty platitudes, such as telling a grieving person that the circumstances result from God’s will or that the deceased is in a better place.
Speak clearly and directly about what has happened, and use words such as “killed” or “died” rather than “passed away” or “expired.”
Don’t go into the graphic details of how someone died.
Source: Mary G. Wilson, assistant professor of justice studies, Kent State University