Community health care aides form the largest group of home health care providers in Canada. There is an increasing trend in Canada towards more home deaths. Home Care and the health care aides that provide this care are an integral component of this movement. An Interpretive Descriptive study was undertaken to identify community health care aides’ experiences of support as they provide end-of-life care to those dying at home. Three themes emerged from the data: 1) Striving to provide the best care, 2) Connections, and 3) Loss. Findings suggest that relationships form an important part of the health care aides' work and are intertwined throughout all the themes identified in this study. Health care aides in the community often feel undervalued and unsupported by the larger health care team. Comparatively little research has been undertaken to examine the unique experiences of the community health care aides providing end-of life care, compared to research on the health care aides providing end-of-life care in the long-term care setting and to research on nurses providing end-of-life care in the community. Community health care aides have unique challenges and characteristics and this study was undertaken to address this gap. / Graduate

Purpose: to understand the tasks that health care aides (HCAs) are responsible for in a nursing home setting, and to understand which of these tasks HCAs feel are more important. Methods: In Phase 1, focus groups were conducted to validate the list of tasks and ensure HCAs could differentiate between them, according to task urgency, quality of care, and quality of life. During Phase 2, HCAs participated in a Delphi process to reach consensus on the relative importance of these tasks. Results: Participants reached consensus that 12 of 31 tasks were highly important according to task urgency. Of these, 10 were from the medical domain (e.g., skin care). Similar results were reached for the other definitions of importance. Conclusions: This study provides a framework for classifying HCA tasks into three domains (medical, social and indirect). Irrespective of the definition of importance used, medical tasks are consistently deemed as more important. / October 2016