Palliative care focuses on improving the patient’s quality of life and the quality of life of the family caregiver. However, in reality, the focus is often on the patient’s needs and not on the family caregiver’s needs. Therefore, the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) has d
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Palliative care focuses on improving the patient’s quality of life and the quality of life of the family caregiver. However, in reality, the focus is often on the patient’s needs and not on the family caregiver’s needs. Therefore, the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) has developed the Oog voor Naasten en Nabestaanden (ON2) method, stimulating healthcare professionals to provide systematic support for family caregivers. However, this method needs to be personalized and detailed for every institution to fit its current workflow. Therefore, this project aims to design a tool that lets healthcare professionals visualize the journey of the family caregiver in their institution, so they can personalize the method and gain insight into which aspects of the ON2 method will be most interesting for them to implement.
During this project, various research activities have been performed to get insight into the family caregiver’s journey. The needs and experiences of family caregivers have been investigated with literature research to use as input for interviews. In the interviews with family caregivers and healthcare professionals, the journey of the family caregiver is explored in four healthcare settings. The healthcare settings involved in this project are the hospital, nursing home, hospice and home care. The result is four journey maps.
The input and experience of these journey maps have been used as input for the design brief. This project aims to let healthcare professionals create the journey of the family caregiver in their institution, so they can reflect on the desired quality of life of the family caregiver and become inspired to implement the ON2 method. Twelve design guidelines provide insight into how to achieve the design goal and interaction vision and are used as input for the ideation phase. In ideation, various concepts are explored in iterative brainstorming and co-creation sessions, which have led to the final design.
The Oog voor Naasten workshop is the final design of this project. The workshop is used as an inspiring kick-off for the implementation of the ON2 method. The design lets the healthcare professionals create the journey of the family caregiver with the help of various tools. Once they have visualized the journey, the workshop provides questions to reflect on which needs should be better fulfilled and how these can be fulfilled in the future. At the end of the workshop, the insights are summarized and used to detail the implementation’s action plan further.
The final design is tested in the hospice setting with four healthcare professionals who reacted enthusiastically and positively. During the workshop, they became aware of the steps that were part of the journey of the family caregiver, were inspired to act, and better fulfil the needs in the future.
However, further research is required to evaluate the workshop in other healthcare settings. The following design should be more intuitive, so it will take less time to figure out the steps.
In conclusion, the workshop supports healthcare professionals in personalizing the ON2 method by letting them create the journey of the family caregiver, so they can reflect on the desired quality of life of the family caregiver.