“A life well-lived deserves a good ending.” What does a good ending mean for you? Your loved ones? Or your patients?
Dr. Angelo Volandes is a physician, writer and patients’ rights advocate. He is Co-Founder and President of Advance Care Planning Decisions, a non-profit foundation implementing systems and technologies to improve the quality of care delivered to patients in the healthcare system. Dr. Volandes practices internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and is on faculty at Harvard Medical School.
He is also the author of the new book “The Conversation: A Revolutionary Plan for End-of-Life Care,” about how people can empower themselves to get the right medical care at the right time and on their terms.
In The Conversation, Dr. Angelo Volandes offers a solution that is medicine’s oldest and least technological tool: talking. Studies suggest there are numerous barriers to communication between doctors and patients. For individuals to be empowered, they must be informed. He calls for a radical re-envisioning of the patient-doctor relationship. He offers ways for patients and their families to talk about the difficult issue of end-of-life choices to ensure that patients are at the center and in charge of their medical care. Dr. Volandes has a considerable amount of experience and has demonstrated success and clinical benefits of advance care planning, including videos as a tool for empowerment.
The Nebraska healthcare community had the privilege of hearing Dr. Volandes’ message during the 2017 Nebraska Healthcare Quality Forum last week. Dr. Volandes shared personal stories as well as his life mission to give individuals a voice as they approach end-of-life decisions related to their care. He aspires to build strong patient/clinician relationships based on shared knowledge and open communication and high quality medical care that reflects patients’ preferences and goals. He challenged attendees to ‘begin the conversation’ today with our family members, patients and residents as a way to ensure respect and choice.
For more information on Dr. Volandes and the topic of advanced care planning, visit Advanced Care Planning Decisions. The site houses patient and provider tools, apps and guides, testimonials, links to video tools and a wealth of related information. We have also included several related journal articles and publications on Dr. Volandes’ work on the Nebraska Healthcare Quality Forum Web page.