Glenda Tarnowski

Discussion: Challenges, Pitfalls, and Possibilities! Learning through Co-Creation: Shifting Healthcare Culture toward Partnership with Family Caregivers using a Design-Thinking Approach.

Learn how, using a design-thinking approach, a committed collective of academics, health and social care providers, and leaders, along with family caregivers (FCGs) are shaping a new reality for the caregiving journey of FCGs. The challenges, pitfalls, and possibilities along the way and how our learning has reframed problem-solving and kept our highly collaborative co-creation active and engaging – recognizing the best solutions result when designing “with” people, not “for” them.

Meeting the needs of a growing population of individuals living in the community with complex healthcare needs is highly dependent on healthcare providers and systems partnering with family caregivers (FCGs) who currently provide 90% of the required care for these individuals yet are often undervalued and marginalized within health and social systems. We believe influencing culture change across vast and complex health and social care systems by educating interdisciplinary healthcare providers to better support and partner with FCGs is a necessary step towards addressing this challenge. Using human-centered design to better understand the obstacles within the system and foster connection with the over 100 multi-level, multi-disciplinary stakeholders including, family caregivers, healthcare educators, leaders, and providers, involved in the co-design has resulted in an innovative, evidence-based solution – the Caregiver-Centered Care online education developed by the University of Alberta, Department of Family Medicine.

This session will provide insights into the lessons learned along the way and the principles of design thinking that continue to guide this successful co-design endeavor. Participants will also have the opportunity to engage in Q & A and idea generation to support the spread and scale of this work.

About Glenda

Glenda is the Growth and Innovation Lead for Caregiver-Centered Care Education in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Alberta. She is a passionate leader and enjoys collaborating with others in the integration of a design-thinking approach to solve complex systems issues and scale innovation for positive impact. She is an experienced and dynamic professional, with expertise in supporting individual and organizational growth. Glenda has many years of experience working in the healthcare system and has held numerous positions including in direct care, specialty care, rehabilitation, and healthcare regulation prior to retiring from the nursing profession in 2022.

Glenda is an alumnus of Royal Roads University Master of Arts in Leadership – Health Specialization and the Graduate Certificate in Corporate Social Innovation programs. She also holds the designation of Certified Health Executive (CHE) and Certified LEADS Specialist from the Canadian College of Health Leaders.