Video helps make end-of-life decisions
An American study suggests that elderly patients are able to make more informed decisions about their “end-of-life” care after viewing a video showing a patient with advanced dementia.
The researchers believe that providing seniors with actual visual images of what life with dementia is like helps them to understand complex health information and to think about how they would want to be cared for in their final days.
The study involved 200 healthy people aged 65 years and older who were interviewed about their health and scored on their knowledge of advanced dementia.
They were randomly split into two groups:
- One listened to a seminar describing advanced dementia
- The other listened to the same seminar followed by watching a two-minute video of a patient with advanced dementia
Participants were then interviewed afterwards about their knowledge of advanced dementia and their preferences for goals of end-of-life care.
The seniors could choose from one of three options: life-prolonging care, which would mean prolonging life at any cost; limited care, which would aim to maintain physical functioning; and comfort care, which aims to maximize comfort and to relieve pain.
Among the 106 patients receiving only the seminar 64% chose comfort care compared to 86% who saw the video and heard the seminar.
Those the video group also scored higher in testing of their knowledge about life with advanced dementia, compared to the control group.
The video group was more likely to remain consistent in their decisions over time. When the participants were contacted again after six weeks to see whether their preferences had changed, 29% of the seminar-only group changed their minds, while only 6% in the video group changed their plans.
“Education of patients using video decision support tools can improve their comprehension of disease states such as advanced dementia that are difficult to envision solely with words,” the authors conclude in the study, published online on BMJ.com.
