Improvements in Advance Care Planning Can Translate to Patient Comfort

Advance care planning and the older patient.

Making treatment decisions for older people is difficult, because of the complex interplay of their multiple co-morbidities, but also because of the fine balance of risks vs. benefit in any chosen management plan. This becomes even more difficult when they lose the capacity to tell us what they want, and often in such situations we have to rely on information from others in order to make decisi...

Advance care planning in primary care.

Patient preferences for future care - how can Advance Care Planning become embedded into dementia care: a study protocol

BACKGROUND People living with a long term condition may wish to be able to plan ahead, so that if in future they cannot make decisions, their wishes about their care will be known; this process is termed Advance Care Planning (ACP). In dementia, guidance stipulates that ACP discussions should take place whilst the person still has capacity to make decisions. However there is a lack of evidence ...

Barriers to advance care planning in primary care.

to assess whether introducing beta-blockade immediately prior to surgery and continuing it for 30 days reduced the risk of cardiac events in patients at risk of, or with, coronary artery disease, vascular disease, previous stroke, etc. In POISE, about 60% of patients had a history of hypertension, but there are no data on the quality of blood pressure control or the presence or absence of eleva...

Improvements in advance care planning in the Veterans Affairs System: results of a multifaceted intervention.

BACKGROUND Advance care planning (ACP) aims to guide health care in the event of decisional incapacity. Interventions to promote ACP have had limited effectiveness. We conducted an educational and motivational intervention in Department of Veterans Affairs outpatient clinics to increase ACP use and proxy and health care provider understanding of patients' preferences and values. METHODS We re...