A rapid scoping review of end-of-life conversations with frail older adults in Canada
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OBJECTIVE: To explore what is known about end-of-life (EOL) conversations with frail older adults across all settings including primary care in Canada, and to understand the barriers to, and recommendations for, EOL conversations. DATA SOURCES: Comprehensive searches were conducted in CINAHL (EBSCO), Embase (Ovid), MEDLINE (Ovid), AgeLine (EBSCO), Sociological Abstracts (ProQuest), and Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts (ProQuest). Searches used text words and subject headings (eg, MeSH, Emtree) related to 3 concepts: frailty, Canada, and EOL conversations. STUDY SELECTION: Twenty-one English-language articles were selected (ie, 4 reviews, 10 commentaries, 3 quantitative studies, 3 qualitative studies, 1 mixed-methods study) that included information about EOL conversations with frail older adults in the Canadian health care context. SYNTHESIS: In terms of having EOL conversations with frail older adults, this study found that many clinicians do not often and adequately discuss frailty and impending death with their older patients. Moreover, patients and their care partners do not have enough knowledge about frailty and death to make informed EOL decisions, leading to patients choosing more aggressive therapies instead of care focused on symptom management. In terms of barriers to EOL discussions, common barriers included a lack of trust between clinician and patient, inadequate EOL training for clinicians, and ineffective clinician communication with patients and families. Recommendations for improving EOL conversations include regular screening for frailty to prompt conversations about care and the use of an interprofessional approach. CONCLUSION: More empirical research is needed that uses exploratory methods to shed light on the contextual factors that may act as a barrier to EOL conversations. More research is also needed on the roles and responsibilities of interprofessional teams in screening for frailty and engaging in EOL conversations. Moreover, there is a need to better understand how frail older patients and their families want EOL conversations to unfold and what best facilitates these conversations.
