Respect

We intend to establish valid patient choices in a community by adapting the training programme “Respecting Choices” ® to the German health and legal system and testing whether it can be implemented. Due to certain training programmes for nursing staff and doctors residents of nursing homes and their proxies will be enabled to take an active part in potentially life-prolonging decisions on their treatment based on an actively planned advance care. The project comprises a longitudinal study, which runs for a period of 6 years, intended to design a training concept “Beizeiten Begleiten ®” (Advance Care Planning) which will be tested and further developed while medical and nursing aspects are integrated. According to our hypothesis a considerably higher degree of advance care planning can be found in the intervention region. The training module is based on the international concepts “Respecting Choices” ® and “Respecting Patient Choices” ®. In the long run, a training programme for all German speaking countries is to be developed which will enable nursing staff to reach end-of-life decisions following the will of residents of nursing homes.