Team profile by members of the Developing a Roadmap for Goals of Care Conversations at Duke Health project team

Goals of care (GOC) conversations are crucial in aligning a patient’s values and ideals with their treatment. It is especially important to have these conversations earlier in a patient’s care to best navigate treatment decisions.

However, the occurrence of GOC conversations within the Duke Health system is limited, with barriers existing such as a lack of time and resources, misconceptions of what these conversations are about and a lack of rapport necessary for vulnerable conversations to occur.

Our team’s mission was to design messaging strategies or interventions that could be implemented into the Duke Health system to increase the frequency of GOC conversations.

In the fall semester, we identified four subpopulations to target with messaging strategies, each with unique needs and characteristics that must be taken into consideration. In small groups, we investigated the literature on each subpopulation and proposed a few intervention ideas that may help improve the quality or quantity of GOC conversations.

In the spring semester, we solicited feedback from both clinical and research mentors within Duke Health and narrowed our choices down to one intervention per subpopulation, each described in the posters below.

Additionally, each member of our Bass Connections team is matched with an individual mentor to work with throughout the year, in accordance with our team’s “hub and spoke” structure of interdisciplinary research. Our mentors are research investigators spanning a wide variety of disciplines, including neurology and couples coping with cancer.

Each Bass Connections team member meets and works weekly with their mentor on a research objective that contributes to our overall goal of improving goals of care conversations, decision making and/or palliative care in the Duke Health system.

Improving Goals of Care Conversations for Inpatient Dialysis Patients at DUHS

Poster by Julia Gambino, Jaden Sacks, Kayla Thompson, Jillian Ryan, Kiira Lyons, Erin Eckert and David Casarett

Improving Goals of Care Conversations between Clinicians and Cancer Survivors

Poster by Breanna Barrett, Juliet Dalton and Saisha Dhar

An Interactive Guide to Facilitate Goals of Care Conversations

Poster by Samantha Cohen, Dorian Ho, Daniel Lee, Astha Ray and David Casarett

Redefining C.A.R.E. for Pediatric Hematology-Oncology Patients at DUHS

Poster by Dakota Douglas, Nikhita Nanduri, Sai Rachakonda and David Casarett