Angelo Volandes

..Advance care planning is a process by which patients plan for future medical care under circumstances of impaired decision-making. Central to this process is the patient's understanding and ability to imagine future health states...

..While this has been attributed to aspects of ethnicity, national origin, and religion, it is possible that limited education might obscure the true relationship between Latino patients and their end-of-life care preferences...

..Several studies have reported that African Americans are more likely than whites to prefer aggressive treatments at the end of life...

..Decision making regarding cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is challenging. This study examined the effect of a video decision support tool on CPR preferences among patients with advanced cancer...

..Options included: life-prolonging (i.e., cardiopulmonary resuscitation), limited (i.e., hospitalization but no cardiopulmonary resuscitation), or comfort care (i.e., symptom relief)...

..The authors tested whether an educational video on the goals of care in advanced cancer (life-prolonging care, basic care, or comfort care) helped patients understand these goals and had an impact on their preferences for resuscitation...

..Unfortunately, multiple studies have shown that surrogates' knowledge of patient preferences is poor. We hypothesized that a video decision tool would improve concordance between patients and their surrogates for end-of-life preferences...

..We hypothesized that people with limited health literacy would have more uncertainty about end-of-life decision making than people with adequate literacy. We also hypothesized that video images would decrease uncertainty...

..To evaluate the effect of a video decision support tool on the preferences for future medical care in older people if they develop advanced dementia, and the stability of those preferences after six weeks...

..Few studies have evaluated the end-of-life preferences of elderly patients in rural communities and whether preferences are associated with level of health literacy...

..Film vignettes provide a detailed ethnography that allows for a more complete discussion of the ethical issues. Film can serve as an additional tool for teaching medical ethics to members of the healthcare professions...

..To explore how a video of a patient with advanced dementia impacts the rationale for patients' decisions about future care...

..To determine whether the use of a goals-of-care video to supplement a verbal description can improve end-of-life decision making for patients with cancer...

..A better approach to family members who want feeding tubes for the demented is to acknowledge the symbolic value of nutrition for them and to seek an alternative means of satisfying the need to feed...

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