Feasibility of implementing a decision aid for advanced cancer patients in a comprehensive cancer centers' outpatient setting: Valuable lessons learned.

Background: Decision aids (DAs) have been proposed as tools to empower patients in decision-making. However, implementing DA for decisions in advanced cancer is challenging. This study focuses on perspectives of oncologists and other healthcare providers on the hindering and facilitating factors for implementing a customizable DA.

Experience of Time and Subjective Age When Facing a Limited Lifetime: The Case of Older Adults with Advanced Cancer.

Objectives: We addressed two questions: (1) Does advanced cancer in later life affect a person's awareness of time and their subjective age? (2) Are awareness of time and subjective age associated with distress, perceived quality of life, and depression?

Methods: We assessed patients suffering terminal cancer (OAC, = 91) and older adults free of any life-threatening disease (OA, = 89), all subjects being aged 50 years or older.

Results: Older adults with advanced cancer perceived time more strongly as being a finite resource and felt significantly older than OA controls. Feeling younger was meaningfully related with better quality of life and less distress.

Development and Evaluation of a Decision Aid to Support Patients' Participatory Decision-Making for Tumor-Specific and Palliative Therapy for Advanced Cancer: Protocol for a Pre-Post Study.

Background: To support advanced cancer patients and their oncologists in therapeutic decisions, we aim to develop a decision aid (DA) in a multiphased, bicentric study. The DA aims to help patients to better understand risks and benefits of the available treatment options including the options of standard palliative care or cancer-specific treatment (ie, off-label drug use within an individual treatment plan).

Objective: This study protocol outlines the development and testing of the DA in a pre-post study targeting a heterogeneous population of advanced cancer patients.

Dealing with Family Conflicts in Decision-making in End-of-Life Care of Advanced Cancer Patients.

Purpose Of Review: The family plays a significant role in end-of-life care and decision-making with advanced cancer patients. This non-systematic review aims to summarize the family role and possible emerging conflicts and problems related to family involvement in decisions with advanced cancer patients.

Recent Findings: Four important domains were identified: (1) discordance between patients and caregivers' understanding of prognosis and goals of care; (2) internal family conflicts; (3) cultural differences regarding the role of the family in end-of life decision-making; (4) the burden on caregivers through caring for cancer patients.

Late decisions about treatment limitation in patients with cancer: empirical analysis of end-of-life practices in a haematology and oncology unit at a German university hospital.

Background: Decisions to limit treatment (DLTs) are important to protect patients from overtreatment but constitute one of the most ethically challenging situations in oncology practice. In the Ethics Policy for Advance Care Planning and Limiting Treatment study (EPAL), we examined how often DLT preceded a patient's death and how early they were determined before (T1) and after (T2) the implementation of an intrainstitutional ethics policy on DLT.

Methods: This prospective quantitative study recruited 1.