ADVICE URGES WIDER SHARING OF HEART CARE DECISIONS

By Jessie Gruman

April 2, 2014

This article was written by Associated Press writer, Marilynn Marchione, and appeared on the USAToday website.

Too often, patients with advanced heart failure don’t realize what they are getting into when they agree to a treatment, and doctors assume they want everything possible done to keep them alive, says the new advice, published Monday by the American Heart Association and endorsed by other medical groups.

It calls for shared decision making when patients face a chronic condition that often proves fatal and they need to figure out what they really want for their remaining days’The goal is “not only living long, it’s living well. People often make decisions about the ‘long’ without even considering the ‘well,'” said Jessie Gruman, president of the Center for Advancing Health, a patient advocacy group. The heart association asked Gruman, who has had several cancers and a heart problem, to review the advice from a patient’s perspective.

The worst thing is to have no plan or clear goals when an emergency occurs, she said.

“The person who’s ill may not have particular cognitive clarity and the caregivers may be upset and exhausted. They just haven’t thought it through ‘ they haven’t had a chance to think it through. They’ve never done this before,” Gruman said.

Read the rest of this article at USAToday.

Original blog post by Jessie Gruman. Updated by the GW Cancer Institute June 2016.