Informative Masterclass
How to Protect your Family’s Assets and Leave a Lasting Legacy
Save Your Spot Now!

White Plains & New City, New York Estate Planning & Elder Law Firm

What Helps Create the Best End Of Life Plan?

April 8, 2022
David Parker, Esq.
What's your end of life plan?
David Parker, White Plains and New City NY Estate Planning Attorney
David Parker, Esq.
David Parker is an attorney who specializes in Estate Planning and Elder Law and has been practicing law for 30 years. Be it Wills, Trusts, Powers of Attorney, Health Care Proxies, or Medicaid Planning, David provides comprehensive and caring counsel for seniors and their families. A large portion of David’s practice is asset protection strategies so that families do not lose their hard earned savings to nursing home care costs. He also handles probate administration for the settlement of estates.
A new study explores how specialized care providers can navigate conversations about end-of-life care and help patients optimize their quality of life and mitigate suffering.

When facing the end of life, patients and their families must make difficult decisions about continuing curative treatments or moving to pain management and comfort care.

Futurity’s recent article entitled “Communication is Key to Guide Patients to Best End-Of-Life Plan” explains that using six months of observational data from a hospital in a Midwestern town, researchers found many providers did not dismiss their patients’ emotions or tell patients to feel differently. Instead, they validated their patients’ fear, hope, or guilt and then walked them through the likely results of continuing treatments.

The researchers found this approach led patients to comply with the providers’ suggestions for end of life or palliative care nearly three-fourths (73%) of the time. The compliance rate was 43% when providers did not use this style of communication.

“These efforts are not aimed at changing the patients’ emotions; they’re aimed at changing their expectations,” says Clayton Thomas, assistant professor of teaching, management, and entrepreneurship, at Iowa State University and co-author of the paper in Organization Studies.

In the paper, Thomas and his co-author Shibashis Mukherjee, assistant professor of management and organization at Ahmedabad University in India, included a discussion between a senior and a member of the care team to emphasize what they termed “feeling rule management.”

The patient faced a decision on whether to sign a “do not resuscitate” (DNR) order if the patient’s heart stopped beating. After the care provider explained that cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) would likely break the patient’s ribs, causing a slow and painful recovery during the patient’s final days of life, the patient chose to sign the DNR order.

“People often think they should fear death. They may not realize that they should fear the cure, that the treatment to prolong life could cause more suffering or lead to other health problems during a patient’s final days,” Thomas says.

Another example of end of life care that could mean more health complications is intubation, which creates an artificial airway for patients who cannot breathe on their own. While this procedure can be lifesaving, it also increases the risk of developing pneumonia. In the study, the researchers stressed a conversation between a physician and the family of a patient with meningitis who was afraid of dying in a nursing home. The doctor expressed concern that using intubation would cause pneumonia and keep the patient from fulfilling her wish of living out the rest of her life at home.

The researchers observed this cognitive reframing with another emotion: hope.

“A terminally ill patient may have hope for a cure. A provider may say, ‘Yes, you should have hope, but you should have hope for comfort and relief,'” Thomas says.

Reference: Futurity (Feb. 21, 2022) “Communication is Key to Guide Patients to Best End-Of-Life Plan”

 

Share This Post
Stay Informed
Subscribe To Our FREE Estate Planning, Probate and Elder Law Newsletter

Book Your Free Initial Consultation With Parker Law Firm Today
Get Started Now

The 15 minute initial phone call is designed as a simple way for you to get to know us, and for our team to learn more about your unique estate planning needs.

Book an Initial Call
Book A Call With Parker Law Firm
Parker Law Firm
White Plains Location

222 Bloomingdale Rd #301,
White Plains, NY 10605

New City Location

120 North Main Street, Suite 203,
New City, NY 10956

IMS - Estate Planning and Elder Law Practice Growth Advisors
Powered by
crosscross-circle