title: End-of-life care: preparing patients and families.
abstract: The priority for care at the end of life is to ensure that all patients experience high-quality care, irrespective of their diagnosis or preferred place of care. This phase of an individual's disease journey is fraught with complex decision-making that can obscure and impair the provision of high-quality care in the absence of advance care planning. In the past few years, the Department of Health in the UK has emphasized this through a number of initiatives and strategies aimed at preparing patients, carers, and indeed professionals, for the terminal phase of disease. This Review explores these initiatives and demonstrates, through the discussion of a recent case history of an individual with a diagnosis of a urological malignancy, how they have been implemented at a local level by The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.
authors.affiliation: The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, Palliative Care Team, Dame Unity House, 2a Guthrie Street, Level 2, London SW3 6NU, UK. jayne.wood@rmh.nhs.uk
authors.forename: Jayne
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wood
authors.forename: Clare
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Smith
mesh_terms: D032722:Advance Care Planning; D003657:Decision Making; D005190:Family; D006801:Humans; D009313:National Health Programs; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000628:therapy; D010166:Palliative Care; D010361:Patients; D013727:Terminal Care; D006113:United Kingdom