The Empowering Patients’ Rights in Hospice Training teaches healthcare providers how to uphold key patient rights in hospice care. Providers learn federal regulations, how to inform patients and families of their rights, and ways to support patient autonomy in care decisions. They also ensure patients understand their right to pain relief and symptom management. By mastering these principles, providers enhance patient dignity, improve communication, and deliver compassionate, patient-centered care.
What You Will Learn:
- Federal regulations supporting patients’ rights in hospice care
- Informing patients and families about their rights
- Empowering patients in making informed choices regarding their care
- Ensuring patients are aware of their right to pain relief and symptom control
Details:
Course length: 1 hour; CME: 1
Languages: American English
Key features: Audio narration, learning activity, and post-assessment.
American Medical Compliance is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education to physicians. Our Continuing Medical Education (CME) program is committed to enhancing the knowledge, skills, and professional performance of healthcare providers to improve patient care outcomes. Through high-quality educational activities, we aim to address the identified educational gaps and to support the continuous professional development of our medical community. American Medical Compliance designates this activity for a maximum of 1 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits. Physicians should only claim this credit for their complete participation in this activity.
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Introduction to Patients' Rights in Hospice
Most Americans prefer to die at home or in a home-like setting, yet over 30% die in acute care hospitals.
Seriously ill patients often state preferences for:
- Receiving adequate pain and symptom management
- Avoiding inappropriate prolongation of dying
- Achieving a sense of control, and
- Strengthening their relationships with their loved ones.
Similarly, caregivers want their loved ones to receive care that is concordant with their wishes and comfort. Hospice helps to achieve these goals for terminally ill patients. Hospice is a model of high-quality, compassionate care for people suffering from a life-limiting illness. It provides expert medical care, pain and symptom management, and emotional and spiritual support tailored to the patient’s needs and wishes.
Hospice also provides emotional support to the patient’s loved ones even into bereavement. This chapter will review hospice care in the US, its structure and delivery, and its growth and barriers to utilization.
This course teaches healthcare providers the importance of hospice care in honoring end-of-life preferences. They learn how hospice manages pain, preserves autonomy, and supports patient relationships. Providers also explore its emotional and spiritual care for patients and families. Understanding hospice structure, delivery, and access barriers helps them provide compassionate, patient-centered care.
Right to Informed Consent and Autonomy
The endorsement of shared decision-making and patient decision aids by major professional societies represents a significant shift in the concept of informed consent.
Research has shown that the quality of medical decisions resulting from the usual process of informed consent is inadequate.
Patients have unrealistic expectations of treatment benefits and harms, and clinicians are often poor judges of patients’ values. As a consequence, people do not always get the best treatment for their condition, and we see unwarranted variation in rates of treatment for preference-sensitive conditions such as those detailed in this report. Medical ethics dictates that patients have the right to understand the possible outcomes of their choices. The current ethical standard of informed consent does not ensure that patients are adequately informed.
Patient decision aids represent important tools for ensuring fully informed patients, and shared decision-making is essential to this process.
This course teaches healthcare providers the importance of shared decision-making and patient decision aids in improving informed consent. They learn how unrealistic expectations and clinician biases lead to poor decisions. Providers explore how decision aids help patients understand options, clarify values, and communicate choices. Training covers the Affordable Care Act’s role in decision aids, provider training, and expanding informed consent. Applying these principles ensures ethical, patient-centered care.
Right to Dignity and Respect
The concepts of respect, autonomy, empowerment and communication have been identified within the literature as being key defining attributes of dignity. In turn, each of these attributes is multidimensional, further contributing to the complex, ambiguous nature of the concept. For example:
Respect may involve:
- Self-respect
- Respect for others, and
- Respect for people’s privacy
Autonomy may involve:
- Having choice
- Giving choice
- Making decisions
- Competence and
- Independence
Empowerment may involve:
- Self-esteem
- Self-worth
- Modesty and
- Pride
This course teaches healthcare providers to uphold dignity in end-of-life care through respect, autonomy, empowerment, and communication. They learn to promote self-respect, honor choices, and support independence. Providers also explore ways to maintain dignity by respecting patients and preserving privacy. Applying these principles enhances palliative care and ensures compassionate, patient-centered support.
Privacy and Confidentiality in Patient Care
Organizations should encourage close coordination among their people when addressing issues related to PII. Protecting the confidentiality of PII requires knowledge of information systems, information security, privacy, and legal requirements.
Decisions regarding the applicability of a particular law, regulation, or other mandate should be made in consultation with an organization‘s legal counsel and privacy officer because relevant laws, regulations, and other mandates are often complex and change over time.
Additionally, new policies often require the implementation of technical security controls to enforce the policies. Close coordination of the relevant experts helps to prevent incidents that could result in the compromise and misuse of PII by ensuring proper interpretation and implementation of requirements.
This course teaches healthcare providers how to protect personally identifiable information (PII) and ensure compliance with privacy and security regulations. They learn the importance of coordination between privacy officers, legal counsel, and IT security teams to safeguard PII. Providers explore HIPAA, privacy rules, confidentiality best practices, and how to categorize PII by its confidentiality impact. Understanding these principles helps prevent data breaches, ensure proper policy implementation, and maintain patient trust.
