From Conversation 2 - Building a Better System to Support Family Caregivers
The Role of Education of Healthcare Providers to Support Family Caregivers: Elements of Effective Education
What are the challenges to the uptake of education for the healthcare workforce about person-centered care for family caregivers?
1. Fragmented healthcare system under duress - person-centered care for family caregivers needs to be seen as integrated across service delivery departments;
2. High volume of educational requirements already burdening healthcare workforce and logistics to ensure learning by supervisors / managers - person-centered care needs to be incorporated into existing learning materials rather than an add-on and additional learning requirement;
3. Leadership from organized family-caregivers lobbying for inclusion in the system - grassroots mobilization of family-caregivers to be recognized and incorporated into the healthcare workforce.
What strategies do you suggest we use to facilitate the spread and scale of the healthcare workforce caregiver-centered care education (person-centered care for family caregivers)?
1. Continue to build out capacity and capability of bringing together family caregivers for their own educational experiences as cohorts of caregivers - breaking down feelings of isolation, improving collaborative problem solving, forming a cohesive group to lead change in the healthcare system (w/ healthcare leadership champions);
2. Offer mandatory educational offerings that bring together diverse learners from across the healthcare workforce - hospital, long term care, assisted living, family caregiving - to create cross-disciplinary teams that can support all efforts to improve healthcare delivery, including integration of family caregiving as an integral part of the workforce;
3. Develop curriculum resources to be delivered by family caregivers in healthcare workforce trainings - transform the positions and leadership expectations - family caregiver developed educational offerings.
