Background: Effective communication between health-care providers, patients and their families is a key aspect of the discussion surrounding a patient’s goals of care.  One crucial part of this process is reaching a shared understanding of how the patient views their own quality of life.   The objective of this study was to characterize factors patients and [...]

Background: Advance care planning is nationally recognized as important for honoring patient wishes at the end of life. Despite this widespread recognition, many patients lack advance care planning and spend their last days in ways not concordant with their values. Moreover, traditional advance directives may provide only a partial context for patients’ belief systems relevant [...]

Background: Reducing LOS promotes value, and when aligned with patient preferences, can improve care. Patients referred for palliative care (PC) generally have longer length of stay (LOS) due to their serious illness, multiple complex management issues, and the fact that long LOS is a reason for engaging a specialty PC team. The aim of this [...]