Despite the risk for the onset of burden, some informal caregivers manage challenges quite well and demonstrate a certain degree of resilience. What does resilience look like among those providing care to dying individuals?
Friends and family members often play a significant role in dying and death. Some take on significant informal caregiving responsibilities. Much research into the practice of informal caregiving has focused on the concept of caregiver burden. Caregiver burden is thought to be experienced by some informal caregivers for whom the practical, financial, and physical realities of providing care result in negative impacts on their health and wellbeing.
Despite the risk for the onset of burden, some informal caregivers manage challenges quite well and demonstrate a certain degree of resilience. What does resilience look like among those providing care to dying individuals?
Resilience in the practice of informal caregiving: A socio-environmental exploration
Dr. Valorie A. Crooks, PhD (left), with members of the Academia Panel
at the Simon Fraser University conference The End of Life: Dying, Suicide, Death on November 3, 2016
Simon Fraser University professor Valorie Crooks is a health geographer by training, specifically interested in the spatial and place-based dimensions of health and health care. Dr. Crooks sees herself as a “health services researcher” with an ongoing interest in understanding lived experiences of accessing needed/wanted health and social care services.
Valorie Crooks spoke in Vancouver at a Simon Fraser University conference called The End of Life: Dying, Suicide, Death. Using her perspective as a health geographer, Crooks investigated the role that socio environmental factors play in contributing to family caregiver resilience in the homecare context.
Crooks drew on findings from a collaborative study involving ethnographic fieldwork conducted with Canadian homecare nurses, care recipients, and family caregivers, and specifically explored the cases of two caregivers who exhibited resilience. Dr. Crooks discussed six socio-environmental factors that played a role in facilitating resilience for these caregivers, and reflected more widely on the potential for resilience in the practice of informal caregiving at end-of life.
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#podcast | @SFUInstituteHum @SGandesha @VIMentalHealth #death #resilience #endoflifecare #caregiver | LISTEN: https://t.co/qsUKFCmuIM pic.twitter.com/Tt6aqnbmmS
— People First Radio (@peoplefirstrad) February 22, 2017
The End of Life: Dying, Suicide, Death
Dr. Samir Gandesha, director of SFU’s Institute for the Humanities,
moderated a panel discussion with academics as part of The End of Life: Dying, Suicide, Death
Simon Fraser University’s Institute for the Humanities hosted a conference in November 2016 called The End of Life: Dying, Suicide, Death. The conference was intended to provide space for pondering the complex and agonizing decisions regarding the end of life. Space for such conversations is especially needed given the 2015 decision of the Supreme Court of Canada declaring that the prohibition on physician-assisted dying infringes upon Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the introduction of Bill C-14 which has resulted in debate about who, when and in what circumstances an individual may make such a decision.
Speakers included academics, graduate students and practitioners who spoke from their own particular perspectives: legal, ethical, medical, and spiritual or religious. The presentations also drew upon insights from literature and art, some of humanity’s most treasured resources.
