Consciousness@Work 58 – November 2025 – Prepared but Never Ready

Planning, training, and practice prepares Care Teams for responding to families, but nothing can get employees emotionally and psychologically ready for a catastrophic loss in their workplace.

As the American Thanksgiving holiday approaches, we at the Family Assistance Education & Research Foundation (FAERF) are holding the loved ones of the fourteen who died in the crash of UPS Airlines Flight 2976 in the center of our hearts—a special place of compassion, meditation, and prayer. When loved ones die during or near the holiday season, their family members are confronted with unique challenges where family gatherings, normally filled with merriment and cheer, are different to say the least, and further reminders of how their lives are changed forever. Interviews with families tell us that when others acknowledge and express understanding the challenges they face, it makes their losses more bearable, as shared pain is always preferable to isolation and loneliness.

The UPS Airlines Independent Pilot Association, IPA, is a member of the Foundation. At FAERF, we mourn the loss of three of their pilots and know that these deaths will cause this year’s holiday time to be extremely difficult for their families and the union — as it will for the families of all fourteen people who died, as well as the entire UPS Airlines family. Family members also tell us how important the investigation process is to their long-term healing. Lessons learned from the tragedy for the prevention of future accidents help give their losses meaning. While the airline and government investigators, local authorities, and countless others are devoting innumerable hours to determining what caused the accident, those of us who train and prepare Care Teams and other family assistance responders will do our part to learn how we can make improvements in processes and procedures to help teams assisting future survivors.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
-Benjamin Franklin, Pennsylvania Gazette, February 4, 1735

Why we prepare and practice for what we hope never happens — the delivery of tragic news to families

This article is about the crucial role of preparation, training, and practice for the delivery of news of the accident to families of those who are directly involved. While Care Team members do not give death notification, many are involved in the first contact with families, alerting them that their loved one may be involved in a crisis that has occurred. Also, leaders within the company experiencing the crisis are often directly involved in working with local authorities in planning the formal notification.

Those familiar with Human Services Response™ Training (HSR) know the term primary prevention, the theory that lies behind HSR™ Training. The father of Crisis Psychiatry, who conducted many studies while at Harvard, psychiatrist Gerald Caplan, M.D.’s research showed the value of preparation and training in advance of a crisis. Preparation before a crisis occurs, ensures that survivors of the crisis receive the support they need as the crisis unfolds — as opposed to after the survivors have regained their equilibrium (psychological balance). Once balance is restored, the picture of these first few moments constitutes the memory of the crisis, i.e., all who respond initially become part of the crisis picture/memory.

First Contact, Death Notification, and Primary Prevention

Long-term research on survivors of all types of tragedies shows that the way a person learns of the death of a loved one has a lasting impact on their emotional and psychological recovery. The crucial need for planning, training, and practicing the delivery of news of tragedy is supported by years of research. The impact that the notification process has on the notifier is also supported by research and provides additional reasons why preparation can be seen as primary prevention for unintentional harms to families and employees alike.

An article in Frontiers in Psychology (September, 2020) Notification of Unexpected, Violent and Traumatic Death: A Systematic Review examined over 3,000 English written articles from 1966 to 2019 for the purpose of verifying the state of this procedure. Of 3,166 titles considered, 60 articles were extracted for the review. The major finding of the work pertained to the need for better training and development of protocols for the delivery of tragic news. Adequate preparation can positively influence the quality of communication and the effects it produces, both on the survivors and notifiers. Therefore, more time should be devoted to this demanding task. The following are specific significant points that the review included.

Death Notification and Guidelines

Death notification is a significant moment that changes the lives of survivors forever.

The words and expressions that are used to give tragic news, the characteristics of who communicates it, the physical setting in which the notification is given, the means used are just some of the factors that can influence the way survivors face one of the most difficult moments in their lives.

These circumstances represent painful memories related to the loss that will never be forgotten and constitute a real break in the narrative story of the person, who will have to reconstruct new meaning around the loss.

Most people remember every detail related to this painful communication for the rest of their lives.

These memories will influence the meaning established from the loss–and sadly research shows that people who cannot find any kind of meaning in traumatic experiences are more likely to develop persistent psychological distress, psychosomatic disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and complicated bereavement.

From the survivor’s perspective, the notification task is mostly judged as difficult and stressful. And more commonly associated with reactions such as emotional trauma, pain, despair, anger, crying, screaming, sadness, aggression, depression, emotional distress, strengthening of significant relationship ties, perception of stigma, social isolation, avoidance of relationships, distress and emptiness, increased heart rate, panting, cardiac arrest, and nausea.

Telephone notification of death is not recommended, yet recognized as necessary in some situations, where distance is involved. In the HSR™ model, first contact involves a phone call to the survivor, alerting them of their family member’s involvement. And as quickly as possible, Care Team members are sent to the home to wait with the family for formal death notification from appropriate authorities. If Care Team cannot get to the home quickly, it is preferable to have local community responders go to the home to wait with the family until someone from the company can arrive. The actual protocol for the formal death notification outside a medical facility is dependent on the mandates for the particular country or geographical location, and the authorities in charge of the overall response. Care Team response is intended to coincide with the processes and procedures of the local jurisdiction.

Emotional Reactions of Notifiers and Recipients and Circumstances Can Influence the Bereavement Process

While Care Team members are not the formal death notifiers, because they are often part of the first contact procedure, education on what has been learned about other notifiers should be included in their training. Notifiers should not underestimate the impact they can have during the first meeting with the family of the deceased. Those who do not develop an awareness of how their attitudes can influence the notification process are likely to cause more stress in recipients often in an unintended way, and to live the moment of communication with great anxiety.

Education and training on what could be potential stressors have been shown to mitigate harmful effects from the process of death notification. The reactions most commonly described by the notifier are anxiety, guilt, sadness, identification with the survivor, discomfort, avoidance, anguish, frustration, isolation, insomnia, lowering of mood, recurrent nightmares, feelings of helplessness, substance abuse, marital conflict, PTSD, chronic stress, response, syndrome, professional, burnout.

Notifiers are also at risk for long-term effects of stress and discomfort perceived during the process, as well as some of the most psychopathological risk factors.

Ideally, the notifier should have enough time to support the survivor. It is essential that they have access to others who can respond to physical and emotional reactions exhibited by survivors, including denial, anger, aggression, withdrawal, isolation, tears, pain, guilt, fear, etc. In some cases it may be useful to evaluate suicide risk or take individual risk factors into account.

Other guidelines the studies show:
Both the physical setting in which the information is given and the speed with which it is exposed can significantly influence the survivor’s ability to assimilate all the details of communication about the news of death. It is important to use clear and direct language and avoid the use of euphemisms. Survivors need to be told when and how they can get more information about their loved one and the circumstances of the death.

Closing Comments

Support for survivors begins well in advance of first contact and notification of death. Every training class, exercise, debrief and opportunity to practice activities related to the Care Team role is directly related to supporting a family member or survivor of the next tragedy. Equally important is practicing self-care on a regular basis. There is no reason to wait for a response before taking care of oneself.

Part Two of this article will be featured in the December Consciousness@Work publication and will describe and discuss what research has shown that helps survivors integrate sudden and traumatic loss, along with what Care and Special Assistance Team Members have shared with us about what helped them in recovering from these deeply personal tragedies.
Follow us to read the next Consciousness@Work “Life Beyond Loss…Survivors Share What Makes Life Possible After We Say Good-bye” in December.