The grief reactions of nursing students related to the sudden death of a classmate.

More than one-thousand adolescents are killed in accidents in Taiwan every year. Developmental factors shape young people's various reactions and responses to the death of their peers. While counseling research has been conducted in a few studies to address this issue of general bereavement, there remains a need for more knowledge on the grieving process and the needs of undergraduate nurse students who experience the loss of a classmate. The purpose of this study was to explore nursing student fears of death and their grief reactions in such a situation. The phenomenological method was used to uncover the meanings of eleven 19-year-old female nursing students' feelings and narratives about their grieving process in relation to the loss of a classmate, who died in a car accident. All interviews were tape recorded and then transcribed. Descriptions were analyzed using Colaizzi's phenomenological methodology (Colaizzi, 1978). The following core themes emerged from the data: morbid anxiety, helplessness after death, fear of disappearance, and thinking of one's own future. The study also found that, while nursing students could cope with their grief, they rarely shared their feeling with others. Young nursing students require careful step-by-step caring to pass successfully through the grieving process. In view of this gap, this study aspires to serve as a useful reference in understanding the sense of loss felt by grieving young people and providing effective and individualized bereavement counseling to nursing students.