Tools for planning end of life care are varied, untested: study

By Kathryn Doyle NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Many tools exist to help introduce people to the subject of advanced care planning, but they vary widely in what they offer and how accessible they are, according to a new research review. “Decision aids” have proliferated in many areas of medicine but have yet to really take off in the area of advanced directives, though they have a lot of potential to help doctors and patients, said Dr. Benjamin H. Levi of Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Levi was not one of the authors of the new paper in the Annals of Internal Medicine, but he did review it for the journal. Less than half of severely or terminally ill patients have an advance directive in their medical record, according to the study authors, and past research has found doctors are only correct 65 percent of the time in predicting what intensive care a patient would want.



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