Publication
What do you mean I am not going to survive my cancer? Helping adolescents and young adults confront mortality
Wiener L · Psycho-Oncology · 2017
Confronting cancer-related mortality during the adolescent and young adult (AYA) phase of life is enormously challenging. Developmentally appropriate, high-quality psychosocial care includes assessing understanding of prognosis, preferences for treatment, social and spiritual needs, and psychological functioning. Resources such as age appropriate advance care planning (ACP) guides can provide valuable assistance to health care providers and families looking to assist and empower AYAs with EoL discussions. Methods: The literature was explored to identify ACP guides and other resources that are available to facilitate communication between AYA and their family members, friends, and health care providers and to review the appropriate time points and/or barriers to introduce endof- life discussions. Results: Early findings suggest that AYA perceive a number of barriers to effective EoL communication, particularly with their health care providers. Limited resources exist that have been specifically designed or tested within the AYA community to assist with these conversations. Those that are available will be reviewed. Recommendations on how and when to introduce end-of-life conversations will be presented. Conclusions: Several resources are available to help facilitate communication with AYA with advancing illness, though few empirically tested. The field of psycho-oncology would benefit from empirical research that determines therapeutic efficacy with each of the resources available. Training modules to help health care providers communicate about end-of-life with AYA are critically needed.
Synced from the TRENDS in Pediatric Palliative Care Zotero library, curated by The Siden Research Team. ICPCN does not host or verify the full text.