The revisions include guidance on honoring care and treatment preferences in federal skilled nursing facilities. The changes follow a complaint against the state brought by national and local disability and aging advocacy groups.
There’s a clear need to improve the quality of Physician’s Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment, or POLST, in nursing homes, says Susan E. Hickman, Ph.D. An expert on the subject, she spoke with the McKnight’s Clinical Daily about her latest findings on best practices in advance care planning.
The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified the importance of advanced care planning and Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) after a new study found that less than half of the orders match the current treatment preferences.
A large study from Canada has found disparities in palliative care referral between people with dementia or organ failure and people with cancer.
The more a nursing home adheres to the newer concept of integrated best practices in these areas, the fewer hospital transfers in residents with advanced dementia, researchers say.
Language services and cultural competency training could help nursing home staff correct imbalances in residents’ end-of-life experience, say investigators from the Columbia University School of Nursing.
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The United States lags behind other countries in palliative care service duration. On average, patients have 10 days fewer than those in comparison countries, researchers say.
Black patients seek substantially more intensive medical treatment in the last six months of life than whites, a study shows. The investigators recommend that more healthcare providers are trained to promote the discussion of end-of-life preferences in Black populations.
New evidence suggests that unresponsive patients’ brains react to sound and that they might be able to hear what clinicians and family are saying.
