- Title
- Medical oncology outpatients' preferences and experiences with advanced care planning: a cross-sectional study
- Creator
- Waller, Amy; Turon, Heidi; Bryant, Jamie; Zucca, Alison; Evans, Tiffany-Jane; Sanson-Fisher, Rob
- Relation
- NHMRC.1010536
- Relation
- BMC Cancer Vol. 19, no. 63
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12885-019-5272-6
- Publisher
- BioMed Central
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2019
- Description
- Background: Medical oncology outpatients are a group for whom advance care planning (ACP) activities are particularly relevant. Patient views can help prioritise areas for improving end of life communication. The study aimed to determine in a sample of medical oncology outpatients: (1) the perceived importance of participating in ACP activities; (2) the proportion of patients who have ever participated in ACP activities; and (3) the proportion of patients who had not yet participated in ACP activities who were willing to do so in next month. Methods: Adult medical oncology outpatients in two Australian cancer treatment centres were consecutively approached to complete a pen-and-paper survey. Items explored perceived importance, previous participation, and willingness to participate across key ACP activities including: discussing wishes with their family or doctor; recording wishes in a written document; appointing a substitute decision maker (SDM); and discussing life-expectancy. Results: 185 participants completed the survey (51% consent rate). Most patients agreed it was important to: discuss end of life wishes with family (85%) and doctors (70%) and formally record wishes (73%). Few had discussed end of life wishes with a doctor (11%), recorded their wishes (15%); chosen a SDM (28%); discussed life expectancy (30%); or discussed end of life wishes with family (30%). Among those who had not participated in ACP, most were willing to discuss life expectancy (66%); discuss end of life wishes with family (57%) and a doctor (55%); and formally record wishes (56%) in the next month. Fewer wanted to appoint a SDM (40%). Conclusion: Although medical oncology outpatients perceive ACP activities are important, rates of uptake are relatively low. The willingness of many patients to engage in ACP activities suggests a gap in current ACP practice. Efforts should focus on ensuring patients and families have clarity about the legal and other ramifications of ACP activities, and better education and training of health care providers in initiating conversations about end of life issues.
- Subject
- medical oncology outpatients; advance care planning; communication; end of life; palliative care; medical oncology students
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1408343
- Identifier
- uon:35828
- Identifier
- ISSN:1471-2407
- Rights
- © The Author(s). 2019 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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