Advance care planning: communicating about matters of life and death

Abstract

While advance directives hold a great deal of promise for ensuring self-determination and quality of life near its end, the majority of Americans face life-threatening illness without having completed effective advance care planning.. This volume recounts the history of advance directives, chronicling the evolution of an approach that initially focused on completing forms, to one that now emphasises more comprehensive strategies for facilitating conversations about end-of-life care and planning for dying and death. It provides helpful strategies for initiating and guiding discussions among providers, patients, and their loved ones, easing the burdens of uncertainty, and improving the efficacy of surrogate decision making near the end of life. Scholars and practitioners from a variety of disciplines provide a well-rounded view of the history and challenges of advance directives. Authors include palliative care physicians, nurses, social workers, grief counsellors, educators, lawyers, psychologists, sociologists, and medical ethicists. The book shares successful strategies on how effective advance care planning can provide smoother transitions at the end of life and ensure better quality of living before death. It incorporates effective multidisciplinary, relationship-based models of advance care planning along with multidisciplinary perspectives to help caregiving professionals initiate conversations and disseminate relevant information to patients and their loved ones and advocates. Case studies illustrate the importance of, challenges with, and prospects for advance directives and advance care planning. The book addresses common barriers to advance care planning and offers ways to overcome them, as well as detailing public health, legal, and comprehensive community planning approaches to change how our current American society deals with dying, death, and end-of-life care. Key Features: Introduces a multidisciplinary, pragmatic approach to advance care planning Addresses strategies to reform advance care planning Presents case studies illustrating the importance, benefits, and challenges of advance directives Features successful initiatives in advance care planning and new directions that shift community practice related to dying, death, and end-of-life care. Includes the contributions of physicians, grief counsellors, medical ethicists, social workers, psychologists, medical ethicists, lawyers, nurses, educators, and others