Despite difficulties, patients have identified communication and decision-making about goals of care is a high priority to improve the quality of end-of-life care.
More than 1,200 clinicians across 13 university-based hospitals in Canada were surveyed regarding the most important barriers to conducting such discussions with patients and their families.
All three clinician types identified the following four barriers as being most important.
1. Family members’ or patients’ difficulty accepting a poor prognosis
2. Family members’ or patients’ difficulty understanding the limitations and complications of life-sustaining treatments
3. Disagreement among family members about goals of care
4. Patients’ incapacity to make goals of care decisions
According to study authors, “These findings can inform the design of future interventions to improve communication and decision making about goals of care.”
More articles on end-of-life care:
End-of-life care getting worse, study shows
6 questions every physician should ask patients
Study: Senior citizens in 10 developed nations fare better than US
