ABSTRACT
The rapport between team members and the team and its organization's management is important in developing meaningful relationships and purpose in the work environment. Dominant issues of loss differed across practice environments, and this influenced the dynamics of the teams in which nurses belonged and which they looked to for support. Hospice nurses associate loss within their working environment primarily with the consequences of dying and death. A shared value system that invests meaning and direction in care is understood to be the key to the ability to work long-term in environments involving recurrent exposure to loss. Formal support does have cost implications, not only in time, in taking staff out of practice situations, but in remuneration for specialist support. In the nursing home environment individuals are almost exclusively elderly and, on admission, may only need supportive care.
