Palliative care for case managers: Building capacity to extend community-based palliative care to underserved older adults

Palliative care has demonstrated effectiveness in alleviating the biological, emotional, social, and spiritual symptoms that accompany serious illness, and improving quality of life for seriously ill individuals and their family members. Despite increasing availability, there are significant dispari...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Gerontology & geriatrics education 2022-04, Vol.43 (2), p.269-284
Main Authors: Gardner, Daniel S., Doherty, Meredith, Ghesquiere, Angela, Villanueva, Carolina, Kenien, Cara, Callahan, Jean, Reid, M. Cary
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aged
Capacity Building
case management
Case Managers
Curricula
curriculum development
geriatrics
Geriatrics - education
Humans
Older people
Palliative Care
process evaluation
Quality of Life
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Summary:Palliative care has demonstrated effectiveness in alleviating the biological, emotional, social, and spiritual symptoms that accompany serious illness, and improving quality of life for seriously ill individuals and their family members. Despite increasing availability, there are significant disparities in access to and utilization of palliative care, particularly among diverse, low-income, and community-dwelling older adults with chronic illness. Training frontline service providers is a novel approach to expanding access to palliative care among underserved elders. This article presents a process and outcome evaluation of a palliative care curriculum that was developed and piloted for geriatric case managers in a large urban area. We describe the background, planning, design, implementation, and preliminary outcomes associated with a pilot implementation of the curriculum. We conclude with implications for replicating efforts to enhance frontline providers' knowledge, skills, and self-efficacy in extending palliative care to communities that lack access to critical supports for their burdensome symptoms.
ISSN:0270-1960
1545-3847
DOI:10.1080/02701960.2018.1544129