Advance Care Planning
For many Americans, advance care planning is not a conversation that one brings up until they are faced with advanced illness. The importance of family involvement and the solutions to achieving meaningful, informed provider/family conversation was discussed at the American Academy of Nursing's Raise the Voice Critical Conversation "Best Practices in Advance Care Planning and Decision Making: Models that Work." The catalyst for the Critical Conversation was a policy brief developed by an Academy Task Force in 2011 titled "Advance Care Planning as an Urgent Public Health Concern" identifying four policy recommendations for ensuring that conversations about informed preferences are on going and the norm.
In March 2015, the Academy endorsed the findings and recommendations of the Institute of Medicine report, Dying in America - Improving Quality and Honoring Individual Preferences Near the End of Life. The Academy joins with hundreds of other national organizations each year to support Healthcare Decisions Day to emphasize the importance of advance care planning. In addition, the Academy supports the work of the Coalition to Transform Advanced Care (C-TAC) on behalf of "individuals with advanced illnesses to receive comprehensive, high-quality, person- and family- centered care that is consistent with their goals and values and honors their dignity."