What gives your life meaning (WGYLM)? Strategies to encourage advanced care planning.

Abstract

8 Background: Conversations regarding healthcare decisions are central to patient-and-family-centered care. Early and regular advanced care planning (ACP) conversations benefit the patient, family, multidisciplinary team, and healthcare system. Initiatives targeting employee’s participation in their own ACP may extend to improvement in patients’ ACP utilization. Methods: A social experiment entitled, “What gives your life meaning” (WGYLM?) initially developed at California State University, San Marcos to increase student’s awareness of ACP was adapted to focus health system’s employees’ attention on ACP over the course of a 3-month campaign that culminated during National Healthcare Decisions week. Results: 55 volunteers were involved in the campaign. Over 10,000 workstation screensavers displayed campaign slogans. A system-wide newsletter with 12,500 subscribers included a campaign write-up. The local newspaper featured a front-page color article. Almost 1,700 post-its with comments of what gives their life meaning were collected. More than 1500 ACP packets with ACP resources were distributed with over 1200 people signing a pledge to have an ACP discussion with a loved one within 30 days. Of the 664-successful follow-up email sent to pledge participants: 77 (12%) of respondents responded to the survey; 44% were nurses, and 12% were physicians; 41% reported already having an AD in place, while 21% did not currently have a designated person to make healthcare decisions on their behalf; 66 (85%) reported talking with someone about what gives their own life meaning. Of these, 51% reported it was their spouse they spoke with and 34% reported it was a coworker; 5% created an AD, and 8% edited an AD since the campaign; 73% agreed it helped them think about ACP in a less scary way; 83% agreed it increased their interest in thinking about future healthcare preferences; and 79% agreed it motivated them to talk about healthcare they would want to receive at EOL with a loved one. Conclusions: ACP conversations can be used to prepare anyone regardless of age, sex, culture, or disease. Asking heath care providers, “What gives your life meaning” may familiarize them with the process of ACP and emboldened them to encourage patients to have these same crucial conversations.