Powerful Tools for Helping Patients Make Critical Decisions

COURSE DESCRIPTION

People living with serious illness, and their care partners, can be faced with difficult decisions at a time when they are already under a great deal of stress. Our job is to help them understand, in simple language, what a proposed treatment is, what the goal is, what it might actually be like, and what the result could be. In this way, we can help them to receive the care they want and need, and just as important, to not receive treatments that they do not want, and which may not be in alignment with their overall goals of care. 

Some of the most effective tools for facilitating these conversations are a suite of Decision Aids developed by the Coalition for Compassionate Care of California. Developed with expert input from across our broad coalition, these conversation tools have been certified by AMDA, the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine. 

Research has shown that patient decision aids “help patients to make more coherent decisions, i.e., the decisions reached after consulting these aids are generally more consistent with patients’ values.” (Shaffer and Hulsey, 2023)

Join us to explore what these tools are, how they were developed, what certification from AMDA means, and how you and your patients can benefit from their use.  The webinar will also introduce an exciting new digital platform for accessing and distributing the Decision Aids within your organization and to your patients.  

$49 for non-members. Want to become a CCCC member and attend for free? Complete information here.

PLEASE NOTE: Registration closes at 11:00 am PT on September 28, 2023.

1 CE available for nurses and social workers. After you click the Register Myself button, be sure to scroll to the Program section below the Add button to click the appropriate program and enter your license number. Next, click the Proceed to Checkout button at the bottom of the page and then complete your registration by clicking the Submit Order in the cart. Live attendance and survey completion are required to earn 1.0 CE.

OBJECTIVES

• Relate the use of decision aids to improving the quality of life for seriously ill patients.
• Demonstrate three best practices for facilitating difficult conversations about treatment choices.
• Apply using decision aids to helping a seriously ill patient identify goals of treatment.

FACULTY

Panelists: 

Erin O’Brien, MA, RN is the Director of Clinical Affairs and Education for AMDA-The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine, where she oversees the development of the Society’s clinical resources and the implementation of its educational strategic goals. Prior to her work at AMDA, she was a research intervention nurse for the University of Maryland School of Nursing, where she spent more than a decade educating and learning from frontline staff and leadership in nursing homes and assisted living communities throughout Maryland. Most of her intervention work has involved function focused care and managing behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia. In 2022, she was an American Hospital Association Next Generation Leadership Fellow, where her project focused on developing practical and effective strategies to address the current staffing crisis in post-acute and long-term care.

Nicole Bartolini, LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who completed her BA at UC Berkeley and her MSW at Columbia University School of Social Work. Prior to joining the regional team as a Lead Clinical Consultant, she worked as a medical social worker for Kaiser for almost 14 years.  Nicole started at Kaiser Hospice services and the worked at Kaiser San Francisco Medical Center covering the Intensive Care Unit and Emergency Department. In recent years, Nicole has worked under the umbrella of Palliative Care with complex patients and as an Advance Care Planning facilitator. Nicole is a strong advocate for the role of Social Work in Palliative Care.  In addition to her work at Kaiser, Nicole is an adjunct Professor at Dominican University of California and a board member for Homeward Bound, Marin County’s homeless shelter system and programs. Nicole loves to spend her time with her husband and her two daughters on the shores of Tomales Bay or at the ocean beaches of Pt. Reyes National Seashore.

Moderator:

Jennifer Moore Ballentine, MA, CEO, Coalition for Compassionate Care of California is an educator, consultant, and advocate with more than 20 years’ experience and expertise in palliative care and hospice, adult education, healthcare ethics and policy. She is the former Executive Director of the California State University Shiley Haynes Institute for Palliative Care and previously held numerous leadership roles. Ms. Ballentine serves on the Palliative Care Council for the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization; the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine Roundtable on Quality Care for People With Serious Illness; the Palliative Care Advisory Panel for the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics, University of Southern California. She has delivered hundreds of in-services, Grand Rounds, professional trainings and state and national workshops as well as keynote and plenary presentations at professional and academic conferences in the field of palliative care.