When Cancer Reaches the End-of-Life Phase
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Since your diagnosis, you’ve been tested and treated to control the cancer in your body. When something worked, you stuck with it. If it stopped working, you and your health care team reviewed the options and perhaps tried a different treatment.
When you reach the end-of-life stage of cancer, there may be no more methods available to control your cancer or you are ready to stop all the testing and treatment.
Your care, however, continues. The focus shifts from trying to stop the cancer to focusing on helping you live as well and as comfortably as possible for the rest of your life.
Nursing facilities that use Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (
POLST) forms achieve a higher level of concordance between orders in the medical record and resident preferences than facilities that do not use the forms, a
POLST forms are available across the country. Compared to living wills and durable power of attorney documents, POLST forms have been
associated with significantly higher decreased odds of resuscitation attempts in the field and increased odds of out-of-hospital death for patients with comfort measures only directives.
The recent study, which was published by the
Journal of General Internal Medicine, is based on information collected from 40 nursing facilities in Indiana. POLST was used in 29 of the nursing facilities and was not used in 11 facilities.
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