Abstract
Objectives
Patient preference for place of death is an important component of advance care planning
(ACP). If patients’ preference for place of death changes over time, this questions
the value of their documented preference. We aimed to assess the extent and correlates
of change in preference for place of death over time among patients with symptoms
of advanced heart failure.
Design
We conducted a secondary analysis of data from a randomized controlled trial of a
formal ACP program vs usual care.
Setting and Participants
We interviewed 282 patients aged 21 years old and above with heart failure and New
York Heart Association Classification III and IV symptoms in Singapore. Analytic sample
included 200 patients interviewed at least twice.
Methods
We assessed factors associated with patients’ preference for place of death (home/institution/no
preference) and change in their preference for place of death from previous time point
(change toward home death/toward an institutional death/toward no preference/no change).
These included patient demographics, quality of life (Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire),
and prognostic understanding.
Results
In our study, 66% of patients with heart failure changed their preference for place
of death at least once during the study period with no consistent pattern of change.
Correct prognostic understanding at the time of survey reduced the relative risk of
change in preference for place of death to home (relative risk ratio 0.49, 95% confidence
interval 0.32, 0.76), whereas a higher quality of life score was associated with a
lower relative risk of patients changing their preferred place of death to an institution
(relative risk ratio 0.99, 95% confidence interval 0.97, 1.00) relative to no change
in preference.
Conclusions and Implications
We provide evidence of instability in patients with heart failure preference for place
of death, which suggests that ACP documents should be regularly re-evaluated.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: July 18, 2020
Footnotes
This work was supported by Lien Center for Palliative Care (LCPC) of Duke-NUS Medical School (Grant LCPC-IN14-0001); and Ministry of Health-Health Services Research Grant (MOH HSRG) of Singapore (Grant NMRC/HSRG/0053/2016).
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Identification
Copyright
© 2020 AMDA - The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine.
