Advance Care Planning? Meh. - Part 1

by Drew Rosielle (@drosielle) (no degrees)Several years ago I was giving a talk in front of a mostly palliative care audience and asked, "How often do you find yourself, in the care of your patients, saying to yourself something like ' Thank the stars this patient has a healthcare directive (HCD) ' ? " The overwhelming answer was a bunch of shrugs and people agreeing occasionally (but not routinely) HCDs are helpful.For something that seems so central to our work, why is it that so many of my colleagues that day were lukewarm about their utility?It ' s fair to say that the last few months have been a controversial one in the hospice and palliative care communities when it comes to ACP, triggered by Dr Sean Morrison ' s editorial inJournal of Palliative Medicine: Advance Directives/Care Planning: Clear, Simple, and Wrong.I ' ve been mulling over that editorial for a couple months now and then noticed that, arguably, one of the most important advance care planning (ACP) studies in recent history has just been published, although probably not for the reasons the investigators were hoping for, and I thought I ' d write about where we ' re at a bit for Pallimed.This post is going to be about my own thoughts as to why I mostly agree with Dr Morrison ' s editorial. The next post will be about this tantalizingly important paper that was just published.If you haven ' t read Dr Morrison ' s editorial, please read it now--it ' s not that long and it seems to be open access at the moment...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - Category: Palliative Care Tags: advance care planning rosielle Source Type: blogs