A Video May Be Worth 1,000 Words in End-of-Life Care

​Adding video messages or testimonials from patients can make end-of-life wishes clearer than written documents alone, according to a study in the Journal of Patient Safety published February 14, 2017. The authors conducted a web-based survey of 741 physicians at 13 teaching hospitals across several states to determine the impact video messages could have on end-of-life care. They presented nine scenarios involving critically ill patients who had physician orders for life-sustaining treatment (POLST) documents or a living will. The physicians were asked to interpret the code status and make resuscitation decisions for each scenario.