Multidisciplinary approaches to address caregiver needs will be integral in the course, said Jamie Penner, assistant professor in the College of Nursing.

“It really takes a village to support caregivers in an effective, meaningful way so they can maintain their own health and well-being and can continue to provide care,” Penner said. “This course aims to bring this village together to learn from and with each other and inspire creative approaches to improving support for family caregivers.”

The undergraduate course, titled Introduction to Family Caregiving Across the Lifespan, is being offered by the College of Nursing but is an interdisciplinary course open to any UM student who is interested, as well as members of the broader community, including older adults and those who already work in health care.

“It is for lifelong learners, people in the community who are currently caregivers, who have been caregivers, or who understand that they likely will be caregivers one day,” said Michelle Lobchuk, associate professor in the College of Nursing. “Caregivers’ needs are multi-faceted, so we need professionals and community members from various disciplines, sectors and backgrounds to be part of the approach.”

The course will run Thursday afternoons from September to December and will be offered virtually due to COVID-related restrictions. It will focus on what caregivers do, the contributions they make, the rewards and challenges they face and how they can be supported.

Penner said there will be some “myth-busting” around certain perceptions that exist around the role of informal caregivers.

“Many people have misconceptions about caregiving, such as ‘I’ll probably never be a family caregiver’ or ‘family caregiving isn’t costly.’ We want to challenge those myths to cultivate a better understanding of caregiving and prepare our communities,” she said.

The program will feature a variety of guest speakers, including UM experts in sociology, family studies, computer science and other fields, as well as representatives from varied caregiver organizations and caregivers who represent various subgroups, including Indigenous caregivers, military and young caregivers.

The course will also touch on the ways the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the role of caregivers.

“We know that prior to the pandemic caregivers had many unmet needs related to both providing care and maintaining their own health and wellbeing,” Penner said. “The pandemic has introduced new, intense challenges and exacerbated the issues that already existed, so caregivers are experiencing even greater strain, loneliness, isolation and exhaustion.

“We need to do better to support family caregivers,” she said.

UM students can register through the UM academic calendar. Community members can contact Karen Nickerson, student advisor, general studies, at 204-474-8330 or Karen.Nickerson@umanitoba.ca.

“We respond to over 2,000 requests for information and services a year, which, I think, shows we are a go-to place for research in Manitoba,” says Susan McClement [MN/93, PhD/01] associate dean, research at the College of Nursing.

The centre currently supports 28 researchers in the college, including a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, providing funding, consultation and other resources.

“Right now we have three researchers with prestigious chair positions and have had 14 chairs awarded to eight different individuals since 2000,” McClement says.

Since 2014 alone, MCNHR researchers have received 131 grants and career awards totaling more than $9.9 million in research funding.

The MCNHR was founded in 1985 as the Manitoba Nursing Research Institute by the late Dr. Helen Glass [Cert.Nurs.(T&S)/58] when she was director of what was then called the School of Nursing.

“We owe gratitude to Dr. Glass for her vision in understanding the need for infrastructure to support nursing research and scholarship,” McClement says.

As part of her associate dean portfolio, McClement assumed the role of director of the MCNHR in 2018, following the lead of seven previous leaders, starting with Dr. Lesley Degner [BN/69], now a distinguished professor emerita.

Senior research manager Diane Cepanec [BA/94, MA/99] has worked with most of those leaders since she started with the centre 20 years ago. “Each of them helped shape what the MCNHR is today and has been an amazing leader and mentor,” says Cepanec.

Hired as a research coordinator in 2000, Cepanec has seen the centre‘s growth first-hand. “We went from offering a single grant valued at $2,000 in 1998 to awarding a total of 12 grants worth more than $60,000 in 2019,” she says.

Dr. Annette Schultz, associate professor, has been a researcher with the College of Nursing for 15 years, with a focus on health services, policy and Indigenous health. She says receiving support from MCNHR staff like Cepanec allows her to keep her focus on writing, crafting ideas and building relationships.

“All my budgets have been done in collaboration with Diane. She is so seasoned at putting these things together,” Schultz says. “As I tell more junior staff, she has read almost every grant that has gone through the college. She sees what gets funded and want doesn’t. To me that’s invaluable.”

Dr. Donna Martin [BN/91, MN/97], associate dean of graduate programs, also praised the centre’s staff, including James Plohman [B.Sc.(Hons.)/97, M.Sc./00], a research coordinator who has been with the centre for 12 years.

“I remember early on submitting an application to the research ethics board and getting this long response with 24 items I’d need to address before it could be approved. I was beside myself,” Martin says. “I went to the centre and James’ positivity dissipated all of that angst in me.”

In 2015, Martin, who led the MCNHR in 2017-2018, conducted a study in partnership with Little Saskatchewan First Nation, documenting the impact that a flood in 2011 had on the community after half its residents were displaced from their homes. The study received $717,855 from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

“The centre really helped with the grant application and providing feedback from earlier drafts, as well as with the dissemination of findings,” she says. “It was an honour to receive that funding, which affirmed that the community’s experience was worthwhile studying and supporting.”

In 2008, the research unit’s name was updated to MCNHR to reflect a growing interest in multidisciplinary health research. Maureen Heaman [BN/78, MN/87, PhD/01], director of the centre from 2006 to 2008, says the name change and refocusing of the centre were the result of a three-year process after a UM senate committee review in 2005.

“We revised the mission, vision and goals and decided to broaden our appeal to researchers and health professionals from disciplines outside of nursing,” she says.

With the updated focus, the centre began offering memberships for those outside the college to access grants and consultative services. Today there are 276 members from across the Rady Faculty colleges, Red River College and Brandon University, as well as professionals from Shared Health, the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and beyond.

“Our members come from across the province, North America, and even as far away as Chile,” says Cepanec.

The MCNHR’s core team also doubled from three to six people, and five part-time student research assistant staff have since been added.

The centre has also grown in terms of the programs it offers students. It currently offers support to graduate students through research grants, an annual poster competition as part the Helen Glass Research Symposium, and travel awards to enable students to share their research with larger audiences.

For undergraduates, the MCNHR has a Summer Research Internship Program, founded in 2010, which teams each student with a research mentor on a project that aligns with their interests.

Fourth-year nursing student Sandra Aboh.

In 2020, the program allowed first-time intern Sandra Aboh, a fourth-year bachelor of nursing student originally from Nigeria, a chance to work alongside Roberta Woodgate [BN/89, MN/93, PhD/01], Canada Research Chair in child and family engagement in health research and healthcare, on a project focused on culturally sensitive services for youth.

“Even though we couldn’t work face-to-face because of COVID, I felt very supported by Dr. Woodgate, who was accessible through videoconferencing apps, email and phone,” Aboh says.

In total, 16 student interns worked with 14 mentors in the program this year.

McClement notes that the MCNHR continues to evolve in its support of researchers.

“The future and ongoing development of the centre is really important, and I think there’s some real untapped potential for nursing to enhance industry partnerships and collaborations,” she says.

She points to a project by associate professor Michelle Lobchuk [BN/92, MN/95, PhD/01] to develop a smartphone app that focuses on empathic communication and self-care management as a recent example of this kind of partnership.

“There are lots of ways nursing researchers can engage with people in different sectors,” McClement says.

She also wants to create a climate that will see greater synergy between researchers and other faculty members. “Instructors have a role to play in identifying issues in classroom and clinical teaching that can provide the basis of researchable problems,” she says. “I think we have lots we can learn from each other.”

She points to a need for better access to maternity care options in rural and remote Manitoba. And she hopes for greater recognition of the benefits of midwifery care, both to childbearing families and to an efficient health-care system.

“Part of my role is clinical, so I’m aware of current issues in the maternal and child health system,” says Thiessen, who in 2017 was one of the first Canadian midwives to receive a Career Development Award from the Canadian Child Health Clinician-Scientist Program.

“This program has groomed me to think like a clinician-scientist and bridge the gap between research initiatives and clinical practice.”

The associate professor of nursing wants to see more midwives in roles that influence the profession. “We need to mentor midwives to ensure we have those voices at policy tables, in circles of research and in managerial and leadership roles,” she says.

Thiessen is originally from Wichita, Kan. She earned bachelor’s degrees in nursing and Spanish at Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia before completing a master’s in nursing with an emphasis in midwifery from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

In 2014, she earned her PhD at UM through the applied health sciences program and joined the College of Nursing faculty. She was also invited into the Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba mentorship program for new investigators.

She was mentored by Michelle Lobchuk [BN/92, MN/95, PhD/01], associate professor of nursing, and Dr. Richard Keijzer, research director for the department of surgery in the Max Rady College of Medicine. She says both were instrumental in helping her to overcome early challenges and navigate her clinician-scientist role.

Thiessen’s doctoral thesis analyzed the issues in Manitoba midwifery since it became a regulated profession in 2000.

“There had never been a notable health workforce strategy,” she says. “Twenty years later, midwifery still has not been fully integrated into the health-care system, and there have been many barriers precluding its expansion.”

Those barriers, she says, include negative perceptions of midwifery. Research is one way to demonstrate that negative assumptions are inaccurate.

This year, Thiessen published two studies comparing costs and outcomes associated with three types of maternity care providers in Manitoba: family doctors, obstetricians/gynecologists and registered midwives.

“Measuring the cost of maternity care is complex,” she says. “But in general, some cost efficiencies were found in midwifery because it involves fewer medical interventions and uses fewer hospital resources.

“Our studies also showed that midwifery clients had significantly shorter stays in the hospital.”

In 2019, Thiessen and a First Nation Elder received more than $800,000 from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to study maternity systems in northern communities.

“We’re working collaboratively with Indigenous and Inuit advisory groups in four jurisdictions across Canada that include 11 northern communities,” she says. “We want to describe and compare maternity policy effects on Indigenous people and other maternity-care stakeholders, looking at their physical, social, emotional and spiritual well-being.”

Midwives are educated to have a unique skill set that helps to empower clients, Thiessen says. A midwife spends time with expectant parents, ensures that they’re informed about birth options, and respects their decisions in a way that is not often seen in health care.

“People have become dependent on the health-care system in a very dysfunctional way and, as a result, they don’t know how to have conversations with health-care providers,” Thiessen says.

“Informed choice discussions, which are part of the fundamental philosophy of the midwifery care model, are one key step in improving the health-care environment and putting the onus on the person to make more informed decisions for their own health.”

More information on the bachelor of midwifery program.