Grief is intertwined with cultural and religious rituals that are highly appreciated in the quality standards of palliative care. Here, we aimed to investigate whether a cultural mourning ritual, the “First Feast,” can be used by palliative care teams to ease the grief response of the deceased patient's relatives.

A questionnaire with 23 questions about the prevalence of the First Feast tradition, the content, the pros and cons, and whether it would be useful for the grieving relatives of deceased patients was prepared and given to the palliative care patients’ relatives. The data were evaluated using the chi-square test.

A total of 427 participants were enrolled in the study; 60.7% were female and the mean age was 36 (±13.4). A total of 76.8% of the participants were from the Tokat region and 77.8% (n = 332) performed the First Feast tradition. A significant difference was observed among participants with Tokat origins and non-Tokat origins in terms of awareness of the tradition (84.8% and 69.7%, respectively; p = 0.001). Ninety-one percent of the participants acknowledged that the tradition helped to ease the grief response of the relatives.

The First Feast, a mourning tradition performed in Tokat and other parts of Turkey, might be a useful auxiliary method for palliative care teams to help grieving families.