Strengthening Workforce Capacity for Goal-Oriented, Person-Centred Care: Applying Big-Data and Participatory Methods to Co-Create Practice Resources

Background: World-wide population aging, rising clinical complexity, health workforce challenges, and an overwhelming desire for ‘aging-in-place’ have intensified calls for health system transformation, emphasizing integration and holistic care. Delivering integrated, person-centred care requires health and social care providers to be equipped with competencies to engage in interprofessional teamwork and shared decision-making to support the co-creation of individualized care plans. However, pre-service education often prioritizes the technical skills for episodic acute care, leaving a persistent gap between education and practice. To bridge this gap, care organizations need to engage employees in continuing professional development (CPD) that supports goal-oriented, person-centred care, tailored to local contexts and responsive to evolving population needs.

 

Approach: We have undertaken a program of research focused on co-creating evidence-informed, context-relevant tools that build foundational competencies for goal-oriented, person-centred care by community-based health and social care providers. This presentation shares findings from three complementary initiatives:

 1) a scoping review of leading practices in case-based learning (CBL) for health and social care provider education,

2) retrospective analysis of 220,000+ home care assessments to generate comprehensive clinical profiles that reflect the complexity of older adults’ needs and inform educational content and

3) mixed-method participatory research engaging 24 home care providers, clients, and caregivers (35 participation instances) in co-designing point-of-care tools that enable meaningful client engagement in goal-oriented care planning.

 

Results: To date, we have generated three key outputs: 1) a summary of leading practices in designing and implementing CBL for the development of interprofessional health and social care providers, 2) eight data-informed clinical profiles that can be customized using routinely collected data to identify and illustrate local care needs, and 3) two prototype tools co-designed with experts-by-experience to facilitate shared decision-making and person-centred goal-setting conversations.

 

Implications: By collaborating with providers, clients and caregivers, we have created evidence-informed resources for designing scalable, context-relevant educational offerings to strengthen integrated care workforce capacity. Incorporating these tools within education and practice can empower organizations and health systems to advance goal-oriented and person-centred care by equipping community-based care teams to meet the evolving needs of aging populations.