PERT Program: Tip of the Month

The Foundation for Health in Aging (FHA) is the major public education vehicle for the American Geriatrics Society. The FHA funds an excellent website called Aging in the Know, which contains short articles, question and answer sheets, and links to other resources on a wide variety of topics, including several on end-of-life issues.

The Hospice and Palliative Nursing Association also includes patient and family education materials. Topics include Fatigue, Managing Delirium, Food and Fluid Issues, Spiritual Issues, Managing Shortness of Breath, and more.

The Alzheimer's Association website has a number of brief Fact Sheets on many topics, including hospitalization in end-stage dementia and the Medicare Hospice benefit. Also available are multi-page brochures on late-stage care, advance care planning, and legal issues. Some of the Fact Sheets are also written in Spanish.

Caring Connections, a program of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO), is a national consumer engagement initiative to improve care at the end of life, supported by a grant from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Caring Connections provides free resources and information to help people make decisions about end-of-life care and services before a crisis.

Our Canadian neighbors at the Ottawa Health Research Institute in Ottawa, Ontario, have created the Ottawa Decision Aids. The A–Z Inventory of Decision Aids can be found at http://decisionaid.ohri.ca/AZinvent.php (you can access both Canadian and U.S. information from here). These decision tools prepare people to discuss their options with professionals by informing them about the options and possible consequences of treatment choices using the latest scientific evidence. A personal worksheet allows people to map out a health profile, personal values, questions, their personal role in decision making, and realize what options are important to them. The following links take you to a Decision Aid for U.S. information for a few topics.

The Should I Receive Artificial Nutrition and Hydration? Wise Health Decision worksheet has you answer questions that will help you decide whether or under what conditions you might artificial nutrition and hydration.
The U.S. version of the worksheet is available at http://www.webmd.com/hw/diet_and_nutrition/tu4431-wisedecision.asp.
Should I Receive CPR and Mechanical Ventilation? is a Wise Health Decision worksheet to help guide your thinking about this health-care issue. After completing this worksheet, you can see the trend in your thinking about CPR and mechanical ventilation.
The U.S. version of the worksheet is available at http://www.webmd.com/hw/health_guide_atoz/tu2951-WiseDecision.asp?pagenumber=1.
The following link takes you to the Decision Aid Summary, which gives you the directions for accessing the U.S. information via WebMD. The instructions lead you to a page of links on many end-of-life care topics.
Start here: Health Wise Decision: Making the decision about receiving end-of-life care.
Should I Stop Kidney Dialysis? is a Wise Health Decision worksheet that will give you a better idea of how a person might feel about stopping kidney dialysis.
The U.S. version of the worksheet is available at http://www.webmd.com/hw/kidney_failure/tu6095-wisedecision.asp.
This link takes you to the Decision Summary page for Making Choices: Long-term feeding tube placement in elderly patients. There, you will find a link under the "How can I obtain the decision aid?" heading that takes you to the Ottawa Decision Aids page. Scroll down until you find this updated worksheet. This Decision Aid is available in several formats and includes an audio file and a PDF version of a worksheet.