Seeing is believing
May 23, 2013 | 
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As an eternal optimist, hey I work in palliative care, I am hopeful that new handheld technology will help patients and families make more appropriate decisions about how much aggressive medical care they want at the end of life. Some studies are showing that when people see videos of end-stage conditions such as dementia http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=17452547 or CPR http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23233708, they are more inclined to choose comfort-oriented approaches. This makes sense in that discussions of hypothetical end-stage situations are likely too hypothetical (see most living will language). Most people outside of healthcare lack knowledge about the reality of such interventions or misunderstand their capabilities given what they see on unrealistic television programs or in the movies.
Several healthcare institutions are starting to use tablets in the ED or other clinical areas http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/242843.php as a way to help people learn about their medical condition and treatment plan. If the tablets are already there, we in palliative care should think about to use them to show the kind of scenarios we discuss with patients and families every day. We don’t even need to develop our own as there are now companies that supply videos to help people learn more about this area such as http://www.acpdecisions.org/
And who knows? Maybe video will end up helping to educate rather than mislead!
P.S. This is also the subject of Eric Widera’s most recent GeriPal post at http://www.geripal.org/2013/05/the-clinician-as-choice-architect.html. Great minds think alike!
Posted in Advocacy, Communication, dying and media, Education | 
Tags: CPR, dementia, video education | 
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Posted in Advocacy, Caregiver, nursing | Tags: advance care planning, living will, palliative care | Comments Closed
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Posted in Advocacy, Communication, Education, Evidenced based medicine, nursing, Psycho-social, Reflective practice | Tags: palliative care language | 4 Comments »
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Posted in Access to care, Advocacy, Cancer, Disease specific issues, Non-pain symptoms, Pain, Palliative Clinic, Psycho-social, Quality of life, Religion, Religion Religious, Spirituality | Comments Closed
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