#9 Advance Care Planning & learning from research with Sarah Combes

In episode 9 I talk with Dr Sarah Combes about her role as a clinical academic and what she has learned from researching. Sarah shares findings from her work and barriers and enablers to Advance Care Planning with older people. Sarah highlights some of the professional challenges in Advance Care Planning and shares a great message: Advance Care Planning is simply about what matters most to a person.

Key messages from Sarah

• Sarah talks about the role of a Clinical Academic and the value this brings to practice.

• Why Sarah focused on Advance Care Planning for people living with frailty for her PhD work.

• How Sarah’s work has helped older people have the knowledge available to make informed decisions.

• Supporting professionals to listen to what matters most for people living with frailty. 

• A system wide approach is needed to improve Advance Care Planning. 

• Living well now matters to older people.

• Maintaining current quality of life mattered more than planning ahead in older people interviewed.

• Relational decision making is important for Advance Care Planning with older people. 

• Confusion about Advance Care Planning terminology and resources was found in the research interviews, and  most interviewees were unclear about what Advance Care Planning meant. 

• How Sarah’s work led to the development of a Toolkit to support Advance Care Planning.

• The importance of listening to a patient’s cues and triggers to find out what matters most. 

• Advance Care Planning is not a one off event

• Always start Advance Care Planning with “What’s important to you?”
  

Resource

• The importance of living well now and relationships: A qualitative study of the barriers and enablers to engaging frail elders with advance care planning

• Development of a theory-based intervention to increase cognitively able frail elders’ engagement with advance care planning using the behaviour change wheel. Combes et al. 2021

• The importance of living well now and relationships: A qualitative study of the barriers and enablers to engaging frail elders with advance care planning. Combes et al. 2021 

• Implementing advance care planning with community-dwelling frail elders requires a system-wide approach: An integrative review applying a behaviour change model. Combes et al. 2019

• Find Information on the strategies developed as part of Sarah's PhD

• Read the Sudore definition of Advance Care Planning

• Find out more about the ReSPECT and CMC process Sarah discusses

Find out more about my Bespoke Consultancy

• Service analysis for teams seeking to improve EoLC or prepare for CQC

• End of Life Care Education

• Lasting Power of Attorney Consultancy

• Talks and presentations

If you’d like to find out more about my work contact me.

What one thing will you do?

It would be great to share what resonated with you from this episode, what is the one thing you will do differently? Head to Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn to continue these important conversations.

Thanks to all my guests for working with me to share their knowledge, experience and stories about Advance Care Planning. I hope you enjoyed listening and have insights to take away; I love hearing your reflections on the series and look forward to reviews on Spotify where you can also subscribe to the series.

Clare

Important Conversations about Important Conversations.

Podcast edited by Martin Whiskin.