Advance Care Planning Conversations in the Oncology Setting: Tips from the Experts.

Advance care planning (ACP) has been identified as a fundamental part of every patient's total health care plan and is actively supported by a number of health care organizations. Despite these endorsements, however, having advance care planning conversations has not come easily for physicians. Training future physicians should include practical ways to address this issue.

Building an Infrastructure and Standard Methodology for Actively Engaging Patients in Advance Care Planning.

Purpose: With little to no infrastructure or standardized methodology in place to actively engage patients in advance care planning (ACP), The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center set out to identify needed resources, develop an intervention to improve ACP, and evaluate the intervention's effects.

Methods: With the support of executive leadership, a multidisciplinary workgroup enlisted the support of ACP champions, performed a root-cause analysis, developed a detailed ACP process flow by provider role, developed patient and family education resources, and developed faculty and staff training materials. The workgroup also implemented two Plan-Do-Study-Act intervention cycles, which identified difficulty using the ACP note function in our electronic health record (EHR) as a barrier to ACP adoption.

Recommendations for enhancing clinical trials education: a review of the literature.

This study aims to apply the evidence-based practice (EBP) process to determine the factors that influence patients' understanding of, participation in, and satisfaction with clinical trials, the informed consent process, and treatment decisions and to make recommendations for improving clinical trials education. Beginning with evidence retrieval, the authors identified key search terms and searched MEDLINE--Ovid, MEDLINE--PubMed, and the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature to identify articles published between July 2001 and July 2006 that highlighted clinical trials education. The articles were reviewed for clinical trials patient education information, clinician methods of communicating clinical trial information to patients, and patient satisfaction with the clinical trials process, including the informed consent process.

Brief report: a systematic process to design a useful chemotherapy education packet for patients at U.T.M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Background: Providing quality written information in a consistent manner to all patients in a large cancer center presents a challenge.

Methods: A new chemotherapy guide was developed, piloted, and distributed institution-wide. Patients and nurses were surveyed during each of these steps.