Advance care planning in palliative care

Two open access articles in the latest issue of Australian Health Review (Volume 39, no.2, 2015) have addressed this topic.

Advance care planning in palliative care: a national survey of health professionals and service managers by Marcus Sellars , William Silvester , Malcolm Masso and Claire E. Johnson, aimed to identify the attitudes, knowledge and practices regarding ACP in palliative care by means of a survey. The results demonstrated that there "is a need to improve systems to support ACP and to understand circumstances in which ACP wishes are not followed."

Palliative care health professionals’ experiences of caring for patients with advance care directives by Claire E. Johnson et al, further examined this topic by another open survey. Results here indicated that advance care planning benefits health professionals, patients and their family. "To maximise these benefits, ACDs need to be clear, comprehensive, medically relevant and transportable documents."