Exploring advance care planning awareness, experiences, and preferences of people with cancer and support people: an Aus
- PDF / 382,834 Bytes
- 12 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 90 Downloads / 167 Views
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Exploring advance care planning awareness, experiences, and preferences of people with cancer and support people: an Australian online cross-sectional study Helena Rodi 1 & Karen Detering 1,2 & Marcus Sellars 1,3 & Ashley Macleod 1 & Julia Todd 1 & Sonia Fullerton 4 & Amy Waller 5 & Linda Nolte 1 Received: 20 July 2020 / Accepted: 5 November 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Purpose To explore advance care planning (ACP) awareness, experiences, and preferences of people with cancer and support people of someone with cancer, in Australia. Methods Descriptive analysis and independent group t tests were used to examine data from a national, online cross-sectional survey. Results Of 705 respondents (440 people with cancer, 265 support people), 48.5% of participants had heard of ACP prior to the survey and 65% had discussed their values or preferences with someone. Significantly more people aged under 65 years had discussed their preferences than their older counterparts. Most (93%) discussions occurred with family or friends, but only 3.7% occurred with a health professional. A total of 33% had documented their preferences, with support people, women, and people aged under 65 years significantly more likely to have signed a legal document appointing someone to make medical decisions on their behalf. Views varied about the preferred timing of ACP and end-of-life care discussions (38.3% when cancer is incurable compared to 20% at diagnosis). Only 3.0% did not want to discuss ACP at all. Topics discussed were significantly different based on cohort, gender, age group, treatment status, and region. Conclusion Despite increasing community awareness of ACP, understanding remains low amongst cancer patients and support people, who generally rely on discussions with family and friends rather than health professionals. ACP should be introduced early across multiple interactions with health professionals, discuss a broad range of ACP relevant topics, and involve the cancer patient and their support person. Keywords Advance care planning . Advance care directive . Oncology . Survey . Caregiver . End-of-life care
* Helena Rodi [email protected] 1
Advance Care Planning Australia, Austin Health, PO Box 5555, Heidelberg, Melbourne, Victoria 3084, Australia
2
Faculty of Health, Arts and Innovation, Swinburne University, Melbourne, Australia
3
Australian Centre for Health Law Research, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
4
Department of Palliative Medicine, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
5
School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Newcastle, Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia
In 2019, approximately 144,000 new cases of cancer were diagnosed in Australia, being an average of 395 people every day [1]. In the same period internationally, there were an estimated 18.1 million new diagnoses of cancer and 9.6 million cancer deaths [2]. The risk of cancer increases with age, with approximat
Data Loading...
