Featured Projects
The Centre on Aging highlights current research and educational projects led by its members and trainees. These projects reflect the wide range of aging-related work happening across UCalgary and demonstrate the value of interdisciplinary collaboration.
This page is regularly updated with new and ongoing projects that are helping to shape the future of aging research and education.
"We Don't Know What We Don’t Know": Improving Dementia Care Navigation
Dr. Gwen McGhan and her co-researcher, Dr. Deirdre McCaughey, began with a straightforward mission: to better understand how people living with dementia and their family caregivers can be supported. Through their community-driven research, they uncovered the significant challenges these families face, as well as key opportunities to make support more effective and meaningful.
Family caregivers of persons with dementia often experience significant burden, characterized by physical exhaustion, emotional distress, social isolation, and financial strain, as they navigate complex and frequently fragmented care systems. Care navigation offers a promising approach to support persons living with dementia and their family caregivers (also referred to as the "caregiving dyad") by addressing their interconnected and multifaceted needs. However, many families continue to face obstacles when attempting to navigate the healthcare system, with family caregivers sharing "we don't know what we don't know."
In their previous work, Drs. McGhan and McCaughey identified the period immediately following a dementia diagnosis as a critical yet under‑examined moment in the caregiving experience. They highlighted this stage as a key intervention point for the caregiving dyad, marked by wide variation in quality of care, healthcare professionals' knowledge about dementia, access to resources, and timely referral to appropriate supports and services. These findings now shape their current research focus, which aims to strengthen support for the caregiving dyad at key junctures, particularly at the time of diagnosis, by developing evidence‑informed pathways that help families navigate a complex healthcare system and improve the consistency and continuity of care for people impacted by dementia.
As one family caregiver so eloquently shared,
"It's really unfortunate that if you think about every single family ... that is going through this, it would be so much nicer if we all didn't have to go through and dig so deep for the information, if the information actually was just there."
Strengthening compassion in healthcare: A research-based training program to improve patient care and reduce provider burnout
Compassion is essential to high-quality healthcare, yet many providers struggle to sustain it amid growing workloads, emotional demands, and organizational pressures. Dr. Shane Sinclair and his research team have spent more than a decade examining compassion from the perspectives of patients, clinicians, and health system leaders. Their work led to the development of the EnACT Compassion Training Program, a validated, evidence-based approach now being adopted across care settings in Canada.
Key findings:
- Clear evidence base: Studies across acute care and long-term care settings identified specific behaviours, relational skills, and organizational enablers that reliably shape patient experiences of compassion.
- Benefits for providers: EnACT has been shown to increase compassion competence, reduce burnout, and strengthen clinicians’ confidence in addressing suffering and providing compassion.
- Benefits for patients: Patients cared for by EnACT-trained providers report higher ratings of compassion, improved communication, and stronger therapeutic relationships.
The EnACT program is accredited by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. It can be completed online or in-person. It integrates theory, clinical practice, experiential learning, and self-care strategies. Participants earn CME/CPD credits, receive a comprehensive workbook, and achieve recognition as Certified Compassionate Care Providers.
This work is helping healthcare organizations build cultures where compassion can flourish, enhancing patient experience and workforce wellbeing.