Advance care planning is a process, which includes choosing a surrogate or alternate decision-maker and communicating values or wishes for medical care. This helps prepare a person for in-the-moment medical decision-making, as well as guiding their surrogate or alternate decision-maker should the person lose capacity for decision-making. Advance care planning is appropriate for healthy adults and patients with their family and healthcare providers, early, recurrently, and as circumstances change. Evidence shows that advance care planning conversations improve patient and family satisfaction with care and concordance between patients' and families' wishes, increase the completion of advance care planning documents, reduce the likelihood of patients receiving hospital care and the number of days spent in hospital, and increase the likelihood of receiving hospice care.
Conditions: Terminal Illness (Terminally Ill, Terminal Disease), End of Life (Death, Dying)
Treatments: Advance Care Planning
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