February 12, 2019

Dr. Carole Robinson, Professor Emeritus and IHLCDP Associate (retired), in the School of Nursing, and her team have launched a new interactive decision guide to support family caregivers for someone with a serious life-limiting illness. Developed with the assistance of family caregivers, users are guided through four steps that include thinking about caregiving now, how the needs for caregiving might change, exploring supports and resources available to support caregiving, and considering options for caregiving. Each step of the Guide generates questions that help inform a personal decision about what is best for caregiving now or if things change. The aim of the guide is to prepare family caregivers for conversations with trusted health providers (family doctor, nurse, social worker, or volunteer) so that they are supported in the critically important work they do and, at the same time, maintain wellbeing.

The Caregiver Decision Making Guide can be accessed here: caregiverdecisionguide.ca

Other team members include: IHLCDP Associate;Dr. Barb Pesut, Director, Dr. Joan Bottorff, and Janelle Zerr.  The research and development of the Guide was supported by funding from the: British Columbia Cancer Foundation, the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies: Wall Solutions Initiative, and UBC’s Faculty of Health and Social Development. Dr. Gayl Sarbit assisted with the development of the interactive guide.

Once users have worked their way through the Guide and identified areas of need, as well as questions, they can save or print their responses to discuss with a trusted health provider (family doctor, nurse, social worker, volunteer), who knows their situation as well as local resources. The Guide is not meant to be used alone because of the many questions it raises; rather, the aim is to focus conversations so that caregivers are supported in the critically important work they do and, at the same time, maintain wellbeing.