Social and healthcare professionals' experiences of end-of-life care planning and documentation in palliative care.
Anne Kuusisto, Kaija Saranto, Päivi Korhonen and 1 others
PMID 37334750WHAT IT FOUND
Palliative care staff described a gap between knowing a patient's end-of-life wishes and documenting them usefully.
Nurses said a new electronic record was too complicated to maintain care plans, while physicians worried their notes would not be found in emergencies.
Key findings
01Nurses reported that a newly introduced electronic health record was so complicated they stopped writing care plans and only documented daily progress notes if something special happened.
02Physicians expressed concern that palliative care notes might not be easily found in other settings, such as the emergency department, because there is no separate sheet for this documentation.
03Social workers faced difficulties because they often could not document directly in the multi-professional nursing system, and their notes lacked a distinct heading to make them visible to other professionals.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The study is context-bound to Finnish palliative care units and their specific electronic health record systems, which may not reflect practices in other countries. The number of physicians and social workers was small (5 each), which may limit the transferability of findings for these groups. The results rely on self-reported experiences and perceptions rather than objective audit of documentation quality or patient outcomes.
Declared interests
No conflicts of interest declared by the authors.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret this as evidence that a specific electronic health record design improves patient outcomes. The study reports on professionals' perceptions of documentation barriers and does not measure whether these barriers led to worse care or missed end-of-life wishes for actual patients.