Are you interested in learning about Advance Care Planning? Did you know that family members are increasingly caring for chronically ill loved ones at home? This may raise concerns and questions related to what happens as health starts to decline.

Many Canadians have yet to hear of advance care planning (ACP). Advanced care planning is a process of reflecting on and communicating your wishes for end-of-life care with your family, close friends and health care team.

This interactive session will focus on what ACP is, how to introduce the subject, how to make difficult decisions and will also be an opportunity for you to ask us questions.

Family members are increasingly caring for chronically ill people at home. This can often be simultaneously challenging and rewarding, creating mixed emotions for many people. Changing roles and expectations and your readiness for the responsibility will be discussed. Each caregiver attributes a different meaning to how being a family caregiver defines them and their relationship with their loved one. This is not often examined or discussed yet holds important value to how someone can perceive and respond as a family caregiver. This interactive session will focus on some of the important implications of taking on the role of a family caregiver and provide an opportunity for you to share your experience.

This talk will address the various challenges and support services of our Quebec Health Care System. We will highlight strategies to better understand and navigate our healthcare system. She will discuss the healthcare resources available to us and how to access them.

Family members are increasingly caring for chronically ill people at home. This care may sometimes consist of both physical and emotional challenges. As a result, it is not surprising that family caregivers often experience distress related to their experiences. They continue to prioritize their loved one, often at a cost to their physical and mental health. It becomes difficult to recognize the need for self-care and the need to respect those needs.

This interactive session will focus on recognizing when caring for yourself becomes critical and will address the challenges of caring for someone while balancing care for yourself.

The transition from active care to palliative care can be challenging for family members. This means that how they care for their loved one changes. The symptoms they have to manage can increase and become harder to manage. They may not always understand these changes, and the care involved can be overwhelming. This talk will address the main symptoms family caregivers manage at home and suggest how to manage them. It will also address what to do when faced with symptoms that are difficult to manage and who to reach out to and when to do so. 

This interactive session will focus on some of the important psychosocial implications of taking on the responsibility of symptom management in the role of a family caregiver and provide an opportunity for you to share your experience.

When a family member is unwell, the caregiver is often witness to multiple changes in the well-being, functional status, and overall health of their loved one. When the illness is chronic and progresses, there are many losses that both the patient and their caregivers must cope with. Grief can be experienced along the entire illness trajectory, highlighting that a family caregiver’s mood needs to be constantly assessed. In addition, bereavement can be complicated after a loved one passes away as the family caregiver tries to adapt to the loss of the patient, their role, and the structure and routine caregiving provided. This interactive session will focus on some possible losses, the grieving of those losses, and how to care for oneself during bereavement.