Grant: Project Grant

As Canadians get older, more people will die in long-term care (LTC) homes, but research has shown that palliative care is poor in LTC. More attention is needed for advance care planning; issues of loss, grief and bereavement; and inappropriate hospitalizations. Most LTC homes do not have a formal way to approach palliative care and have barriers to delivering palliative care. As a result, clinical decision-making is challenging for LTC. LTC residents often have many medical conditions that happen at the same time. This makes anticipating how the patient will do difficult and can cause stress for family and staff. Our research program goal is to improve the quality of living and dying for LTC residents and their family. We will build on our Canadian research program and use our existing networks to make sure that our work is sustainable. So far, we have 8 study sites in 4 provinces (ON, MB, SK, AB). We will deliver our program to more LTC homes and create protocols for each province to be able to deliver the program. We will also develop an online tool to help families and residents with advanced care planning, create training modules and bereavement pamphlets. Our research involves residents, family and staff in all research activities. We make sure that their voices are heard to learn from them. Together, we build our tools to help improve resident and family experience with living and dying in LTC. We evaluate how our work is developing and let the residents, families and staff know what is happening through LTC visits and meetings. Our research team regularly meets with national leaders across organizations, communities, and disciplines to exchange ideas. By exploring what happens within each LTC site, we will make accessible online tools that meet the needs of diverse groups across Canada. Our research has the potential for widespread use across sectors. As a result, we will support improvements in health-related knowledge and health system and health care.