Publication
Enhancing Community Education on Family Caregiver Well-being Through Partnership
Bakula D, Crump N, Smith T, Goodwin E · Pediatrics · 2025
Family caregivers of children with medical complexity (CMC) provide intensive medical care and coordination for their child and experience higher rates of anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress than their peers.1,2 CMC are children with complex chronic conditions that result in functional limitations, technology dependence, and high health care utilization.3 The needs of caregivers of CMC, defined in this article as parents and guardians, are rarely addressed.4 Professionals who interact with caregivers in medical, school, and social service settings lack knowledge in how to address the complicated needs of caregivers.5 Our team sought to develop structured education on caregiver well-being for medical, school, and social service professionals in our community. Our target audience included doctors, nurses, teachers, social workers, and case workers across the state of Kansas. We created this education through our academic medical center’s Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO) program. ECHO programs are designed to bring high-quality medical education and telementoring to community providers.6 Other ECHO programs have addressed caring for CMC7,8 but few included family partners,8 few target school and social service professionals in addition to medical providers, and none to our knowledge have focused exclusively on supporting caregivers of CMC. In this article, we describe the unique approach our team took to designing and implementing an ECHO series on addressing the well-being of caregivers of CMC using a clinician/family partnership approach. Our team consisted of both clinicians (DB, pediatric psychologist; EG, pediatrician; TS, pediatrician) and a family partner (NC, caregiver of a CMC). © © 2025 by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Synced from the TRENDS in Pediatric Palliative Care Zotero library, curated by The Siden Research Team. ICPCN does not host or verify the full text.