Essentials of Caregiving: A Course Design Statement (Version 0.1)
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Essentials of Caregiving is a five-session training course for family caregivers of people with serious illness, built on the Three-Level Frame: somatic (the body), affective (the feelings), and narrative (what it means for a life). It is designed to reach caregivers early in the caregiving cycle, when most are caring for someone who is sick but not dying, and to stay practical rather than theoretical. The course has twelve modules, four at each level of the Frame; at every level, two modules face the person receiving care and two face the caregiver. A twelve-item self-rated checklist, one item per module, opens and closes the course: caregivers are assessed in Session 1, taught with weight on their lowest-scoring items in Sessions 2 to 4, and reassessed in Session 5. This statement records the course's architecture and design principles as they stood in November 2026, positions the course against established caregiver programs, and proposes an evaluation that others may run. The module texts are held separately and are not part of this deposit. Use of AI: The course design and the positions taken are the author's. The text of this statement was drafted with the assistance of an AI language model (Claude, Anthropic) working from the author's course materials, notes, and direction; the journal references were checked against the PubMed record. The author reviewed, corrected, and approved the final text. Rights: © 2026 Christopher A. Matthews and SkillsHuman, Inc. This statement is released under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. The course modules and related course materials are not covered by that license and remain all rights reserved. Use of this document or its contents to train or fine-tune machine-learning systems requires written permission from SkillsHuman, Inc. Licensing inquiries: [email protected]
Author: Matthews, Christopher A.
Language: English
Topic: Nursing care and research
Subfield: Research and Theory
Field: Nursing
Domain: Health Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225588617