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Health Care Professionals’ Views Associated with the Barriers and Facilitators of Advance Care Planning (ACP) for Community Dwelling Older Adults with Palliative and End-of-Life Care Needs Towards Achieving a ‘Good’ Death: Findings from a Qualitative, Exploratory Pilot Study
Bellamy, G.; Stock, J.; Schofield, P. Acceptability of Paper-Based Advance Care Planning (ACP) to Inform End-of-Life Care Provision for Community Dwelling Older Adults: A Qualitative Interview Study. Geriatrics2018, 3, 88.
Bellamy, G.; Stock, J.; Schofield, P. Acceptability of Paper-Based Advance Care Planning (ACP) to Inform End-of-Life Care Provision for Community Dwelling Older Adults: A Qualitative Interview Study. Geriatrics 2018, 3, 88.
Bellamy, G.; Stock, J.; Schofield, P. Acceptability of Paper-Based Advance Care Planning (ACP) to Inform End-of-Life Care Provision for Community Dwelling Older Adults: A Qualitative Interview Study. Geriatrics2018, 3, 88.
Bellamy, G.; Stock, J.; Schofield, P. Acceptability of Paper-Based Advance Care Planning (ACP) to Inform End-of-Life Care Provision for Community Dwelling Older Adults: A Qualitative Interview Study. Geriatrics 2018, 3, 88.
Abstract
This paper reports the findings from a pilot study designed to explore the barriers, facilitators and similarities with the delivery and implementation of two distinct models of Advance Care Planning (ACP) documentation for older adults in their last year of life used by health care professionals in their clinical practice. PACe (Proactive Anticipatory Care Plan): a GP led model and PEACE (Proactive Elderly Persons’ Advisory CarE): a nurse led model with community geriatrician oversight were used by participants in their clinical practice. Telephone interviews were conducted with general practitioners (GPs) to explore their views of using the PACe tool. Hospital admission avoidance matrons took part in face to face interviews and care staff employed in private residential care homes took part in individual telephone interviews to explore their views of using the PEACE tool. GPs and admission avoidance matrons were employed by Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) and all study participants were recruited from the South East of England where data collection took place in 2015. Nine telephone interviews and two face-to-face interviews (one joint and one individual) were conducted with twelve participants. The data was analysed thematically. Participants highlighted the similarity of both tools in providing focus to ACP discussions to inform individual end-of-life care preferences. The importance of relationships was a pivotal theme-established, trusting inter-professional relationships to enable multidisciplinary teamwork and a prior relationship with the older person (or their proxy in the case of cognitive impairment) to enable conversations of this nature. Using both tools enabled participants to think critically and reflect on their own practice was another theme identified. Notwithstanding participants’ views to improve the layout of both tools, using a paper-based approach to deliver streamlined ACP and end-of-life care was a theme to emerge as a barrier which focused on the problems with access to paper-based documentation, accuracy and care co-ordination in the context of multidisciplinary team working. The value of technology in overcoming this barrier and underpin ACP as a means to help simplify service provision, promote integrated professional practice and provide seamless care was put forward as the solution.
Keywords
palliative and end-of-life care; older adults; advance care planning (ACP); health care professionals.
Subject
Public Health and Healthcare, Primary Health Care
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
