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Exploring The Reassessment Of Palliative Home Care Clients: A Mixed Methods Study, Maya Canham

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Introduction: The timely reassessment of clients receiving palliative home care (HC) is critical for supporting clinicians with care planning and service delivery. However, there is little information on the frequency of reassessments and factors driving reassessment in palliative HC clients.

Objectives: The objectives of this study were to: (i) determine the proportion of palliative HC clients reassessed with the interRAI Palliative Care (interRAI PC) instrument, (ii) calculate the average interRAI PC reassessment interval, (iii) identify the key factors driving interRAI PC reassessment at various intervals, and (iv) explore the factors that influence palliative HC clinicians to reassess their clients in …

Grief On The Margins: The Death Of A Family Member To Substance Use, Adair Shaw

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Despite Canada's high death rates from substance use, there is limited research on the sociopsychological impact on families, who often face stigma and disenfranchised grief. This study explores how family members make meaning of a substance-related death. Through qualitative inquiry, eleven family members were interviewed on their experience of grief from substance death. The imprint of losing a family member to mental illness and substance use is fraught with intergenerational grief, ambiguity, prolonged mental-emotional distress, and relationship challenges. Substance death was also associated with stigma, social withdrawal, and shame for many participants. However, grievers reconstructed the socially prescribed negative perceptions …

Disrupting And Expanding The Discourse: Palliative Care Clinicians' Experiences With Patients' Non-Physical Suffering, Maxxine Rattner

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

While one of the primary aims of palliative care is to prevent and relieve suffering, both physical and non-physical, research to date has been very limited re: clinicians’ experiences with patients’ non-physical suffering (e.g., suffering that may be psychological, emotional, social, spiritual and/or existential in nature); both how clinicians work with/respond to this kind of suffering in their day-to-day work, and the effect of this aspect of their work on clinicians themselves. No research to date has considered the impact of palliative care’s dominant non-physical suffering discourse — which presents the relief of non-physical suffering as falling along a binary …

Narratives Of Baby Boomers: Envisioning Late Life Spiritual Resources, Jane A. Kuepfer

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

ABSTRACT:

In this narrative inquiry, first-wave baby boomers (six males and six females born between 1946 and 1955) reflected on their lives and envisioned living into old age. While literature has focused on trends in baby boomer spirituality, issues of aging, and spiritual needs and tasks among elders, this study listened for “spiritual resources.” Initially defined broadly as that which has sustained a person throughout their life and will sustain them in the future, spiritual resources came to be understood as those things, both internal and external, that address deep human need for such spiritual values as love, hope, peace, …

“Comfort, Comfort My People”: A Qualitative Study Examining Dying Persons’ And Their Caregivers’ Experience Of Spiritual Care As An Aid To Having A Good Death In Grey And Bruce Counties, Ontario, Dwight Biggs

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Dying persons and their caregivers encounter several needs as part of the dying journey. Spiritual care, when offered effectively, can help address many of those needs. When people’s needs are fulfilled, their suffering is lessened and there is an increased possibility of them experiencing a good death. However, when spiritual care is not offered effectively, dying persons and their caregivers often continue to face unalleviated suffering which limits their ability to experience a good death. This research project explores how dying persons and their caregivers experience spiritual care in their homes as an aid to dying well and having a …

Personal Growth In Couples Caring For A Child With A Life-Threatening Illness, Kimberly Kennedy

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Little is known about the potential for positive outcomes in couples who have a child with a life-threatening illness. The current study was a secondary analysis of demographics and personal growth data of 34 couples actively caring for children with various life-threatening conditions. There were three overarching goals in this research: (a) to examine differences in Posttraumatic Growth Inventory scores (PTGI) of mothers and fathers, (b) to examine the relationship between demographic variables and PTGI scores of mothers and fathers, and (c) to measure level of congruency in couple-dyad scores and test if partners’ growth scores are predictive of one …