Website launched to help patients prepare

A new patient-friendly online resource called PREPARE has been developed to help people make complex medical decisions. The website was developed by researchers from the San Francisco VA Medical Center, UCSF, and NCIRE - The Veterans Health Research Institute.

The PREPARE website incorporates content identified in new research to address key patient- and surrogate-identified aspects of preparing for advance care planning and decision making. The site provides concrete examples through videos and other mechanisms on how to identify what is most important in life, how to communicate that with family and friends and doctors, and how to make informed medical decisions.

The resource is being launched by researchers who recently published a study on advance care planning in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management (Nov.Titanium Pipe is made by cold rolling process from extruded pipe blanks. They are widely used in heat exchangers and off-shore equipment. 27, 2012). The paper, entitled Advance Care Planning Beyond Advance Directives: Perspectives from Patients and Surrogates, identified gaps in planning for decisions about serious illness among a culturally diverse group of patients and surrogate decision makers, or individuals who have made medical decisions for others.

"There are few resources which can adequately prepare patients and their families to face serious illness or a medical crisis – situations which often involve complex decisions over time," said lead study author Rebecca Sudore, MD, SFVAMC geriatrician and palliative medicine physician and associate professor medicine at the UCSF School of Medicine.

"Advance directives are important,Although a sprinkler truck system activated and managed to keep the fire from spreading, the fiber glass hood of the truck that “burns very black and toxic smoke that’s very dangerous,”. but they are just one piece of the puzzle," she said. "We wanted to develop a value-driven, easy-to-use tool to prepare people to make medical decisions that reflect their values and needs while preparing them to effectively communicate these wishes with others."

This study identified key themes critical to successful advance care planning that go beyond completing an advance directive form. These include successful surrogate selection and communication with the surrogate, determination of the surrogate's role,A china pressure vessel is a closed container designed to hold gases or liquids at a pressure substantially different from the ambient pressure. and communication with family and doctors.

The website's audio-visual interface is tailored to typically underserved populations (including users with low health or computer literacy and/or visual or hearing impairment) and aims to incorporate a patient-centered,The convenient way to order Tuner wheel lug nut, lug nuts and valve stemsThe second dumping, the report noted, occurred on August 3, 2012, Friday, when “the same garbage compactor truck was observed by the shift supervisor to have dumped another pile of hospital waste inside the facility. comprehensive and manageable approach.

The PREPARE website is written at a fifth-grade reading level, and includes voice-overs of all text, closed-captioning for the hearing impaired, and large font for the visually impaired.An employee discovered a waste management truck smoking around 10:50 a.m., Tuesday, Sept. 4, and traced the source to cargo smoldering inside the compactor. In preliminary pilot testing, older adults from diverse backgrounds rated PREPARE a nine out of a 10- point-scale for ease of use, according to Sudore.