b'ENHANCING CAREGIVER DECISION-MAKINGNICHOLAS DIONNE-ODOM, PhD, RN, ACHPNAssistant Professor, University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)School of Nursing, Department of Acute, Chronic, and Continuing CareCo-Director, Caregiver and Bereavement Support Services,UAB Center for Palliative and Supportive CareAssociate Chair, Palliative Care Research CooperativeGroup Caregiver Core2015 Career Development Awardee:Developing an UpstreamPalliative Care Telehealth Intervention for Family Caregivers of Personswith Advanced Cancer Living in the Rural South2019 Pilot and Exploratory Awardee:An Optimization Trial toPrepare Advanced Cancer Family Caregivers for Decision PartneringUsing the Multiphase Optimization Strategy (MOST)For Dr. Nick Dionne-Odom, a priority focus in palliative care, oncology, and geriatrics is to prepare the 3.3 million U.S. family caregivers of persons with cancer to effectively partner in healthcare decision-making. But because few interventions exist that target this exact issue, Dr. Dionne-Odom is developing and testing early palliative care coaching interventions to enhance support skills for family caregivers of persons with advanced cancer. While most interventions think about decision-making as focusing on a singular choice point,Dr. Dionne-Odoms formative research shows that decision-making might be better conceived as a health behavior process that consists of a variety of skills, conversations, behaviors, and tasks, which both precede the actual moment when a decision is made and continue on after that choice is made. Using an innovative factorial trial designstructured to test the individual and collective efficacy of intervention components Dr. Dionne-Odom hopes to develop the early preparation that caregivers need to enhance their entire constellation of decision-making skills before any actual decision is faced. I was an ICU nurse for about 10 years. I was struck by how hard it was for families to make decisions for patients nearing end of life. I always thought we could do better, which led me to become a palliative care nurse scientist. Through the lens of holistic, whole-person, relationship-centered care, I can examine and enhance my patients and their families responses to illness, going beyond just treating the underlying disease. Palliative care is truly a one-of-a-kind specialty in both practice and research. Its essence includes a parity among clinicians and researchersnot just physicians and nurses, but also social workers, chaplains, and the rest of the interdisciplinary care team whose collective mission is exploring new and better ways to maximize quality of 14 life. NPCRC has been absolutely vital to the growth, health, and life of our specialty. '