Culture & End of Life Care: Conversations with Patients and Families

This course helps you sort the facts surrounding an ethical question in an end-of-life situation, develop options for resolving ethical issues, and negotiate treatment plans with patients who elect to use CAM along with conventional care.

Outcome Objectives:

As a result of completing this activity, the participant will be better able to:

- Compare methods of giving bad news to a patient.
- Consider ways to respond when a patient is overwhelmed and raises questions that are difficult to answer.
- Identify a series of steps that physicians can take to examine and address their own emotions in order to preserve the quality of patient care and protect the physician's well-being.
- Elicit information from family members to clarify the incapacitated patient's motivations when she completed a living will.
- Sort the facts surrounding an ethical question in an end-of-life situation.
- Develop and consider options for resolving ethical issues.
- Give advice to patients about complementary and alternative medicine (CAM )based on evidence.
- Negotiate treatment plans with patients who elect to use CAM along with conventional care.
- Monitor patients' usage of CAM.