A small but promising study found that having medical trainees lead brief advance care planning (ACP) education sessions nearly tripled the odds of older patients completing Durable Power of Attorney for Healthcare forms. The trainee-led sessions also significantly boosted ACP-related billing codes. The findings suggest that tapping into existing trainee workflows could be a low-cost way to close a major gap in end-of-life planning for geriatric patients.
End-of-life planning conversations are notoriously hard to have — and even harder to document. But a new study suggests that medical trainees, armed with just a 10-minute education session, could meaningfully move the needle on advance care planning (ACP) in geriatric primary care.
Researchers at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey looked at 498 patients over age 60 who had no advance directives on file. Sixty-five of them received a brief trainee-led ACP education session; the rest got standard care. The results, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, showed that the trainee-led intervention made a real difference.
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Why it matters: Advance care planning is chronically underutilized in older adults, yet it's critical for ensuring patients' wishes are honored. This study shows that integrating motivated medical trainees into clinic workflows — at minimal cost — could be a scalable, practical solution for primary care settings looking to improve ACP documentation.
