Have you made your advance directives? The following article is a great place to start. The PREPARE For Your Care website is an informative and easy to use resource to assist in making medical decisions for yourself and others. The advance directive form on the site is currently only for California residents.
User-Friendly Decision-Making Tools Help Older Adults Make Choices for Future Medical Care
UCSF Study Shows Promise for Patient-Driven Advance Care Planning
By Scott Maier, UCSF
May 18, 2017
“A user-friendly website and advance directive form given directly to patients can be highly effective in empowering older adults to plan for their future medical care without the need for significant health system resources, according to a new study from UC San Francisco.
Researchers found that between 25 and 35 percent of older adult patients had evidence of advance care planning in their medical records after receiving simple decision-making tools. In the study, one group was given an easy-to-read advance directive, a legal document that allows patients to record their wishes for future medical care. This group had a 25 percent increase in advanced care planning. A second group received the advance directive plus a user-friendly website called PREPARE For Your Care, producing a 35 percent increase. Neither intervention required any clinician involvement, training or education.
Patients who received the PREPARE website also reported significantly more engagement in advance care planning, such as having discussions with family, friends and clinicians, and feeling more confident and ready to have these conversations.
The study, which appears online May 18, 2017, in JAMA Internal Medicine, shows promise for efforts to increase advance care planning among older adults, revealing that patient-driven initiatives can empower people to make decisions about their care.”