Establishing goals of care is the gold standard of best-practice in the field of palliative care. Given the complexity of caregiver needs and goals, there is an urgent need for development of caregiver counseling measures that go beyond traditional assessment of distress and burden. Healthcare organizations need brief and valid assessments to identify caregiver needs. Tapping into caregiver’s inner strengths and resources by addressing confidence, skills, and quality of life, will provide clinicians a method of measuring the effectiveness of interventions.
The COPE is a simple, easy-to use measure that assesses knowledge of dementia, confidence in caregiving abilities, communication strategies, emotional well-being, support system, planning for the future, enjoying life, and confidence facing future challenges.
If you are interested in helping our research team further develop a sub-scale of the COPE measure, please go to our Research Study page or contact me at alyssa.aguirre@austin.utexas.edu.
Click here for a PDF of the COPE Instrument: COPE Instrument
Click here for a PDF of the COPE-ING 15-Item: COPE-ING Instrument 15 Item
To read more about the development of the COPE, click here.
