Preparing Surrogates for Complex Decision Making

Advance care planning (ACP) has been defined as a process that supports individuals and patients in defining their values, goals, and preferences for future medical care and sharing that information with others. The main goals of ACP include preparing patients for complex medical decision making and ensuring that they receive medical care aligned with their goals in case of decisional incapacity. If patients lose decision-making capacity, surrogate decision making often falls to close family members or friends. However, in many instances, these family members and friends do not know that they were named on advance directive forms or that they may be thrust into complex surrogate decision making.
Source: JAMA Internal Medicine - Category: Internal Medicine Source Type: research