Research shows family caregivers involved in palliative care are not yet supported to the desired extent. Therefore, the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) started the Oog voor Naasten en Nabestaanden (ON2) project, a Palliantieproject financed by ZonMw. The ON2 project helps healthcare organizations with improving the care for family caregivers in their organization. Currently, the LUMC supports organizations in setting up and carrying out their projects. From 2024 onwards, organizations need to independently use the ON2 toolkit 3.0 to set up their own projects. However, the current ON2 toolkit 2.0 is not guiding and supporting enough for organizations to use it without any external support.
The aim of this graduation project is to create a redesign of the ON2 toolkit 2.0 that supports and guides users throughout the new ON2 trajectory 3.0. Qualitative research is conducted with six healthcare organizations, to map the current ON2 trajectory 2.0, the available support and experiences of participants.
The qualitative research indicates that project teams of different healthcare settings express a preference for compact and visual information, support when orientating and setting up their projects, and a well-structured ON2 toolkit 3.0. Moreover, the willingness of healthcare professionals to provide care to family caregivers plays a crucial role in the successful implementation of ON2.
A desired vision was formulated and used as starting point for the ideation and conceptualization phase. The vision aims at increasing the awareness of healthcare professionals on the added values of ON2 for themselves and making the redesign more accessible, guiding, supportive, inspiring and user-friendly.
The final concept of the ON2 toolkit 3.0 has four main features. Firstly, informing users about the ON2 trajectory 3.0. Secondly, providing the ON2 materials. Thirdly, inspiring users about the ON2 trajectory 3.0 by sharing experiences of participants. Lastly, creating a profile to independently perform the ON2 trajectory 3.0 and set up your own project.
The final concept was tested on the basis of two qualitative interviews and a questionnaire (n=8). The target group was very positive about the concept and experienced the new toolkit as structured, intuitive, clear, user-friendly, visually pleasing, calm and inviting. A roadmap was created for the LUMC to further develop and realize the ON2 toolkit 3.0.
Some limitations in this graduation project are the amount of users that were interviewed and involved in the test sessions, the concept is not tested with all healthcare settings and it was not feasible to test the concept in practice. Therefore, the concept cannot be guaranteed to be effective in every context and for independent use.
It is recommended that the LUMC conducts test pilots with current and new organizations before launching the ON2 toolkit 3.0, and after the launch collects feedback from users to further optimize the toolkit. In addition, the LUMC should make clear agreements with stakeholders about the management and maintenance of the toolkit. Lastly, it is recommended to add content incrementally, starting with the most essential content and adding more content over time to make the toolkit more guiding and supportive.