Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Research Scholarships - Master's program

Home-based palliative care helps people with serious illness reduce suffering and live better in the comfort of their own homes, particularly at end of life. Most Canadians want to spend their final days at home, and Federal, Provincial, and Territorial governments agree that it is a healthcare priority. However, home-based care is complex and relies heavily on unpaid informal caregivers like family and friends. Patients and caregivers often struggle to get the information they need and to have their values and goals included in care planning. When palliative patients need to move between hospital and home caregivers often end up having to make sure critical information is not missed in the transitions. Caregivers who provide palliative care at home in Canada say they need a single, unified record to coordinate care and fix gaps in information and communication. This research will work with home-based palliative care patients and caregivers to document and validate the information they most need to address their care and communication challenges. The results of this research will: - provide patient and caregiver advocacy groups with clear, actionable documentation of their needs to present to health system planners; - offer clinical and affiliated health care providers additional understanding of specific patient and caregiver information needs to help inform clinical practice; - give health policy makers evidence to guide planning for better home-based palliative care coordination. Ultimately, this research aims to create practical knowledge to help achieve the desired unified care coordination record for home-based palliative care.