To Dialysis and Beyond: The Nephrologist’s Responsibility for Advance Care Planning

Advance care planning: Beyond the living will.

For a variety of reasons, the most commonly used advance directive documents (eg, the living will) may not be very useful in many situations that older adults encounter. The durable power of attorney for health care is a more versatile document. We advocate focusing less on "signing away" certain interventions and more on clarifying the goals of care in the ambulatory setting.

Advance Care Planning among People Living with Dialysis

PURPOSE Recent nephrology literature focuses on the need for discussions regarding advance care planning (ACP) for people living with dialysis (PWD). PWD and their family members' attitudes toward ACP and other aspects of late-life decision making were assessed in this qualitative study. METHODOLOGY Thirty-one interviews were completed with 20 PWD over the age of 70 (mean dialysis 34 months) ...

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 for paediatric patients.

Medical and technological advances have increased survival rates and enhanced the quality of life for infants, children and youths with chronic life-threatening conditions. Advance care planning includes the process of discussing life-sustaining treatments and establishing long-term care goals. Paediatric health care practitioners have an ethical obligation to educate themselves about this aspe...

Advance care planning in primary care.