Provider Perspectives on Advance Care Planning for Patients with Kidney Disease: Whose Job Is It Anyway?

What is it about?

This article draws on interviews with health care providers from a wide range of fields and specialties who are involved in caring for people with kidney disease, to explore how they understand advance-care planning, how they practice it, and what they have to say about it. Our interviews revealed that providers generally agreed that advance care planning is important, but held quite different understandings of what it is, and most thought that it was not really their job to do it.

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Why is it important?

Advance care planning describes a process of thinking carefully about what decisions you would want made about your care if a time came when you could not speak for yourself, and taking steps to make your wishes known to others. It is considered especially important for people with serious or terminal illness, and ideally can make medical care at the end of life more humane and more congruent with people's wishes. With advanced kidney disease it is especially important that people give thought ahead of time to what kidney dialysis would mean for them and what other courses of treatment might be available.

Perspectives