What Surrogates Understand (and Don't Understand) About Patients' Wishes After Engaging Advance Care Planning: A Qualitative Analysis.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The goal of advance care planning (ACP) is to improve end-of-life decision-making for patients and their spokespersons, but multiple studies have failed to show substantial or consistent benefit from ACP. Understanding how and why ACP under-performs in the setting of complex medical decision-making is key to optimizing current, or designing new, ACP interventions.

Aim

To explore how ACP did or did not contribute to a spokespersons' understanding of patient wishes after engaging in ACP.

Design

Thematic analysis of 200 purposively sampled interviews from a randomized control trial of an ACP decision aid.

Setting/participants

200 dyads consisting of patients 18 years or older with advanced serious illness and their spokesperson at 2 tertiary care center

SUBMITTER: Simmons DB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9255430 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature