Article Title
Can Faith Community Nurses Successfully Teach Parishioners About Advance Health Care Planning?
Abstract
The primary intent of Advance Health Care Planning (AHCP) and Advance Health Care Directives (AHCDs) is promotion of autonomy by encouraging individuals to participate in health care decision-making in the event of a terminal illness or injury. In spite of this intent, there is a general reluctance to discuss mortality and plan for the end-of-life events as evidenced by the low percentage of individuals who have completed AHCDs. This lack of planning has resulted in much unwanted, futile, and/or expensive health care, and has been declared an imperative public health concern.
To address the low percentage of completion, a faith community nurse-facilitated educational session, using the Caring Conversations© workbook, was developed as a pilot project and offered to parishioners in a Christian environment. The session provided education regarding AHCP/AHCDs to congregational and community members by an experienced volunteer faith community nurse. Multiple modes including a PowerPoint presentation, question and answer sessions, and role play were used to demonstrate how to talk to family members about their wishes.
A pre-test/post-test design was utilized to evaluate if the educational session would increase the knowledge of community members about AHCP/AHCDs and results indicated that this was indeed the case.
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