Eliciting regret improves decision making at the end of life.

Introduction: Management choices at the end of life are high-stake decisions fraught with emotions, chief among is regret. Our objective in this paper is to test the utility of a regret-based model to facilitate referral to hospice care while helping patients clarify their preferences on how they wish to spend the remaining days of their lives.

Methods: A prospective cohort study that enrolled consecutive adult patients (n = 178) aware of the terminal nature of their disease.

Staff perceptions concerning barriers and facilitators to end-of-life care in the nursing home.

Although many nursing home residents have chronic, life-limiting conditions, most die without the benefit of palliative care or with palliation delayed until the last days of life. The goal of this study was to determine whether the presence of a comprehensive palliative care program in nursing homes would affect the knowledge and attitudes of the staff. The intervention group was able to identify more problems in delivering palliative care than the control group, but this only reached statistical significance on 2 items.