title: Exploring the district nurse role in facilitating individualised advance care planning.
abstract: Health-care policy recognises the importance of engaging people in making decisions related to the management of their health. Advance care planning (ACP) offers a framework for decision making on end-of-life care. There are positive indicators that ACP enables health professionals to meet people's preferences. However, there are reports of insensitive attempts to engage people in end-of-life care decision making. District nurses are in the ideal position to facilitate ACP, as they have the opportunity to build relationships with the people they are caring for--an antecedent to sensitive ACP--and in recognising and fulfilling this role, they could ameliorate the risk of insensitive ACP. Distric nurse leaders also have a role to play in ensuring that organisational and environmental factors support appropriate ACP facilitation including: training, fostering a team culture that empowers district nurses to recognise and meet their ACP role, and advocating for appropriate ACP evaluation outcome measures.
authors.affiliation: Senior Lecturer in Cancer and Palliative Care, Buckinghamshire New University, England.
authors.forename: Michelle
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Boot
mesh_terms: D032722:Advance Care Planning / Q000592:standards*; D003142:Communication; D003152:Community Health Nursing / Q000592:standards*; D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D024802:Nurse's Role; D009723:Nurse-Patient Relations; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D013222:State Medicine / Q000592:standards; D013727:Terminal Care / Q000592:standards*; D006113:United Kingdom
keywords: advance care planning; communication; decision making; district nurse; evaluation