Rashmi Sharma receives Distinguished Professor of Geriatrics Best Poster Presentation Award

Dr. Rashmi Sharma, associate professor (General Internal Medicine) led the poster presentation, titled “Challenges Experienced by Family Members of Hospitalized Older Adults with Dementia When Making ‘in-the-Moment’ Decisions Regarding Intensity of Care”.

Co-authored by Janaki M. Torrence, Elizabeth Dzeng, Ruth A. Engelberg, and J. Randall Curtis, the poster outlined the challenges faced by family members in making decisions about intensity of care for loved ones living with dementia who have been hospitalized. The research was funded by an R01 grant from the National Institute of Nursing Research. Sharma is a co-investigator of a supplement to the parent grant.

Study findings indicated that there was often a mismatch in how family members and clinicians viewed patient baseline function and quality of life and that family members worried that clinicians limited options and questioned their decisions. Family members struggled to navigate uncertainty around quality of life and make these high-stakes decisions even when the patient had previously communicated preferences regarding medical treatment. The research team concluded that family members of patients with dementia need more support to improve communication with clinicians and navigate tradeoffs around quality of life and complex emotions.

Sharma is an attending physician on the Palliative Care Consult Service and a researcher on health equities. Her work explores ways to increase engagement of culturally and linguistically diverse communities in palliative care research; identify research priorities for these communities; and develop novel, multi-level interventions to improve care for patients with serious illness and their families from these communities. Her overall research goal is to create novel, multi-level interventions to decrease the distress that patients with serious illness and their families experience with a focus on culturally and linguistically diverse communities.

On the significance of the work to her personally, Dr. Sharma stated, “As the daughter of immigrants, I am so excited to finally be doing research that is focused on identifying the needs and strengths of those from immigrant communities to address health inequities.”

More information on her work can be found on the websites of the Cambia Palliative Care Center of Excellence and The Center for Scholarship in Patient Care Quality & Safety.