Better care for the dying. Hawaii healthcare system develops a manual for end-of-life care

In early 1996, as it became clear that Americans were becoming increasingly concerned about end-of-life care, the leaders of St. Francis Healthcare System (SFHS), Honolulu, convened a meeting at which local people--community and parish representatives as well as healthcare professionals--discussed the matter. The meeting's participants identified 10 issues as essential in end-of-life care: decision making, pain management and comfort care, pastoral and spiritual care, psychosocial care, hospice and home care, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, futility, withholding and withdrawing treatment, artificial nutrition and hydration, physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. The participants then divided themselves into 10 teams, each of which spent six months studying one of the identified essential issues. In each case, the team reviewed the relevant SFHS policies and procedures and compared them with national standards. The team also interviewed staff members about the policies and procedures, comparing the written versions with actual practices. Each team then wrote a chapter on its assigned issue, after which a core committee wove the chapters into an end-of-life care manual for SFHS. The manual was published in June 1997. The system's leaders currently use the manual to educate staff members in good end-of-life care.