Promoting Assisted Decision Making in Acute Care Settings (PADMACS) for care planning purposes

This project aims to produce an educational interactive game which will support health and social care professionals working in acute hospitals to include their patients in decisions about treatment and care plans. Decision-making capacity is the ability to make decisions for one-self. In some cases an older person may experience impaired decision-making capacity. This may be temporary, recurring and remitting or it may be indefinite. Every patient, regardless of whether their decision-making capacity is impaired, should be supported to make decisions in relation to their care. The interactive game resulting from this project will educate healthcare professionals as to their responsibilities in this regard and will encourage discussion about the important values and behaviours that healthcare professionals need in order to carry out these responsibilities. The game will be developed and played by health and social care professionals who deliver care to older people in hospitals, this includes: doctors, nurses, social workers as well as those allied to the care of older people such as physiotherapists and clinical speech therapists. Representatives of patients and family carers will also develop and play the game. Through the use of stories of real experiences, facts and ethically challenging situations, the game players will be encouraged to think about how communication between patients and healthcare professionals might be improved to promote greater participation of patients in healthcare decision making. The game will facilitate discussion of some of the cultural values and barriers that healthcare professionals may encounter which inhibit their behaviour in relation to engaging patients in decision-making. We envisage that these discussions will assist in promoting a better environment for both healthcare professionals and patients to engage with each other in relation to treatment decision-making. The game resulting from this project will be used in the ongoing continuing professional development of doctors.

 

Award Date
24 February 2017
Award Value
€239337
Principal Investigator
Professor Thilo Kroll
Host Institution
University College Dublin
Scheme
Applied Partnership Awards