ABSTRACT
This chapter explores what we understand about people’s experiences of stress, loss and transition, and considers how the impact on the workplace. Drawing on both empirical evidence and theoretical models, it asks how the health and social care manager, committed to managing and leading ‘with a caring face’, might respond to these emotional disturbances as both a manager and a leader, maintaining their own wellbeing and promoting the wellbeing of other people. When the stress or anxiety is being caused by factors intrinsic to the workplace, the first concern should be to address these, where possible. It is difficult to draw a clear line between stress arising from factors such as bereavement, loss and change and work-related stress caused by occupational culture and the wider contexts of politics and power because of the blurring caused by the porous nature of grief and emotional disturbance.
