Canadians are experiencing increased life expectancy and chronic illness requiring end-of-life care. There is limited research on the multiple roles for family members providing home-based palliative care. Based on a larger ethnographic study of client-family-provider relationships in home-based palliative care, this qualitative secondary analysis explores the enactment of multiple roles for family members providing home-based palliative care to seniors with advanced cancer. Family members had multiple expectations to provide care but felt their expectations of services were unmet. The process of enacting multiple roles was depicted by three interrelated themes: balancing, re-prioritizing, and evolving. Positive and negative health responses resulted from attempts to minimize personal health while simultaneously maintaining health. "True" family-centred care was found to be lacking, but should be a goal of health professionals involved in end-of-life care.

Although virtual reality (VR) technology has been implemented as a tool to address the health issues of older adults, its applicability to social connectedness is underrepresented in the literature, and less is known about its efficacy in this area in contributing to overall wellness and well-being in later life. Expanding the VR possibilities beyond traditional entertainment purposes holds considerable potential for the older adult market. Technological tools have been employed in the elder health care field for many years, and cutting-edge developments such as virtual and augmented reality have begun to be used to facilitate optimal wellness in aging. Such technological advances have the potential to significantly impact one of the most important issues that older people face: social isolation and loneliness. This paper will serve as an introductory exploration of what is currently known about the use of virtual reality technology with an older cohort.

Sign comprehension is critical for effective driving, responses to warnings, and way-finding. Signs that are poorly comprehended by older people increase accident risk and may compromise independence. This study sought to determine whether iconic sign comprehension suffers in healthy aging and in the presence of cognitive impairment. Additionally, we examined whether the addition of text to iconic signage would increase comprehension in older adults. In Experiment 1, young adults, healthy older adults, and older adults with varying levels of cognitive impairment were asked the meaning of 65 signs used for driving, warnings, and way-finding. Healthy older adults were generally good at sign comprehension but had difficulty with way-finding signs. Older adults with cognitive impairment had poorer sign comprehension overall and particular difficulty with way-finding icons and signs that had icons only. In Experiment 2, healthy older adults were asked the meaning of signs containing icons only, or icons and text. A significant improvement in comprehension was found when text was added. An important implication of this work is that the assessment of sign comprehension needs to involve a broad and heterogeneous sample of older adults reflecting the range of perceptual and cognitive abilities represented in the population.

No abstract