Journal of palliative medicine
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Observational Study
How to Open the Door: A Qualitative, Observational Study on Initiating Advance Care Discussions with Parents in Pediatric Palliative Care.
Context: Advance care discussions (ACD) between health care professionals (HCPs) and parents of children with a life-limiting disease are a core element of successful pediatric advance care planning (pACP). Yet, they are perceived as a challenging situation for all participants. Objectives: Our goal was to investigate the first step of ACD and identify its challenges and helpful communication strategies to develop a conversation guide for initiating the pACP process and structure the conversational opening. ⋯ HCPs and parents should clarify expectations and aims at the beginning of the conversation. Future research should focus on how HCPs can be trained for this task and how the right timing for introducing ACD to families can be identified. Clinical Trial Registration number 049-12.
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Background: Most older adults visit the emergency department (ED) near the end of life without advance care planning (ACP) and thus are at risk of receiving care that does not align with their wishes and values. ED GOAL is a behavioral intervention administered by ED clinicians, which is designed to engage seriously ill older adults in serious illness conversations in the ED. Seriously ill older adults found it acceptable in the ED. ⋯ Emerging themes were identified within six domains: (1) nurses' prior experience with serious illness conversations, (2) overall impression of ED GOAL, (3) refinements to ED GOAL, (4) implementation of ED GOAL by ED nurses, (5) specially trained nursing model, and (6) use of telehealth with ED GOAL. Conclusions: ED nurses were generally supportive of using ED GOAL and provided insight into how to best adapt and implement it in their clinical practice. Empirical evidence for adapting ED GOAL to the nursing practice remains to be seen.
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Palliative care (PC) subspecialists and clinical ethics consultants often engage in parallel work, as both function primarily as interprofessional consultancy services called upon in complex clinical scenarios and challenging circumstances. Both practices utilize active listening, goals-based communication, conflict mediation or mitigation, and values explorations as care modalities. In this set of tips created by an interprofessional team of ethicists, intensivists, a surgeon, an attorney, and pediatric and adult PC nurses and physicians, we aim to describe some paradigmatic clinical challenges for which partnership may improve collaborative, comprehensive care.