Palliative Nursing Commons^™

Improving Advance Directive Documentation In A Primary Care Clinic In The Midwest, Teresa Hagedorn

Doctor of Nursing Practice Scholarly Project

An Abstract of the Scholarly Project by

Teresa Gayle Hagedorn

Advance care planning (ACP) is a continuous communication process linking patients, family members, caregivers, and healthcare providers. Personal values, life goals, and preferences regarding future medical care are significant to every person as we will inevitably reach the end of life. Advance directives (ADs) promote patient autonomy and provide legal documentation of a patient’s wishes for future care. According to the National Institute of Health (2018), only 1 in 3 adults in the United States have a documented AD in their electronic medical records (EMR). This quality improvement project aimed …

Improving Palliative Care Education In The Acute Hospital Setting, Maria Klug

Doctor of Nursing Practice Scholarly Project

As the geriatric population grows rapidly, the importance of utilizing and understanding palliative services continues to rise. Although palliative and hospice care are included in different healthcare courses, misconceptions and lack of knowledge continue to serve as barriers to the utilization of palliative care. The purpose was to assess knowledge, improve palliative care education, and increase understanding of the perspectives of the interdisciplinary team involved in acute patient care. The setting was the telemetry unit in a 300-bed acute care Kansas hospital. A mixed design was utilized with a goal of quality improvement in the use of palliative care. The …