Sidebar: Understanding Medical Orders for Advance Care Planning

Understanding advance care planning within the South Asian community

BACKGROUND Advance care planning (ACP) is a process of reflection on and communication of a person's future health-care preferences. Evidence suggests visible minorities engage less in ACP. The South Asian ethnic group is the largest visible minority group in Canada, and information is needed to understand how ACP is perceived and how best to approach ACP within this diverse community. OBJECT...

Advance care planning for paediatric patients.

Medical and technological advances have increased survival rates and enhanced the quality of life for infants, children and youths with chronic life-threatening conditions. Advance care planning includes the process of discussing life-sustaining treatments and establishing long-term care goals. Paediatric health care practitioners have an ethical obligation to educate themselves about this aspe...

Advance care planning in primary care.

Do-not-resuscitate orders as part of advance care planning in patients with COPD

There is growing awareness of the need for advance care planning in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, do-not-resuscitate (DNR) order implementation remains a challenge in clinical practice. We retrospectively analysed an observational cohort of 569 COPD patients with 2.5-8 years of follow-up in secondary care, to evaluate potential determinants and the prognos...

Understanding patients' and doctors' attitudes about shared decision making for advance care planning

BACKGROUND Although shared decision making (SDM) is the preferred model of making complex treatment decisions with patients, patients' and doctors' attitudes towards SDM for advance care planning are unknown. OBJECTIVE We sought to: (i) gain general insights into the current practice of SDM and attitudes about patient involvement, and (ii) gain specific insights into experience with, and atti...