She left home at the age of 16 and was a hospital volunteer in World War II and finally entered medical school in 1951 (Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation, 2013). After the war, Dr. …show more content…
Kübler-Ross spent most of her life working with the dying. Furthermore, Dr. Kübler-Ross is the author of the revolutionary book On Death and Dying in 1969, where she first discussed what is now identified as the Kübler-Ross model (Nevid & Rathus, 2010). This book is built upon her interviews and research with terminally ill patients. In this work, she proposed the renowned Five Stages of Grief as a pattern of adjustment. These five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance (Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation, 2013). The classification of these five stages was an innovative model at the time but has since developed into the standard model. Dr. Kübler-Ross received an intense analysis of her work which had an impact on her future career path. Moreover, Dr. Kübler-Ross ended her university teaching career to work privately on what she called the “greatest mystery in science” which is death (Nevid & Rathus, 2010).
The five stages are a part of the framework that makes up our discovering to survive with the one we lost. The stages are tools to assist us frame and identify what we may be feeling for the loss of a loved one. Furthermore, the stages are not stops on continuum in grief. Individuals working through grief do not necessarily go through all of the stages or in a prescribed order (Nevid & Rathus, 2010). The stages were developed to equip individuals with knowledge to cope with life and loss (Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation,